End Game: Understanding the Bitter End of Evictions · End Game: Understanding the Bitter End of Evictions MICHAEL D. GOTTESMANt I. INTRODUCTION' "We have a bit of a problem here,"

End Game: Understanding the Bitter End of Evictions

MICHAEL D. GOTTESMANt

I. INTRODUCTION'

"We have a bit of a problem here," State Marshal Robert Miller says.2He stands on the front porch of an apartment with eviction papers in hand.The landlord began an eviction action weeks ago for nonpayment of rent,and this morning Miller has come to put the tenant out. But he arrived tofind that the tenant took one last chance to stick it to her landlord: Sheripped some cabinets off the wall, allowed her daughter to write on thedoors and walls, and "bulked out" (a practice where the tenant leaves allpossessions in order to create a high moving bill for the landlord). Millercalls the landlord with an update. The landlord insists that until this point,she and her tenant of three years had been on good terms. Angry with hertenant, who is not home this morning, the landlord considers canceling theremoval to allow the tenant time to move her own possessions, whichwould save the landlord the moving costs and marshal fees associated withthe removal. After deliberating, she decides that she has lost enough renton this property already and she has no choice but to foot the high movingbill to get the tenant out of her property.

A few weeks later, Miller faces an entirely different situation. As heapproaches another apartment to remove a tenant on this rainy morning, hestops his car to wait behind a school bus while two people wheel a disabledchild onto the bus. He soon discovers that he will be removing the singlemother and two brothers of that child from their apartment. As movers loadthe child's medical bed onto the city truck, her two sons get drenchedlugging boxes to the neighbor's porch. The mother says she could not paythe rent because an administrative snag delayed welfare assistance checks.

t Yale Law School, J.D. 2008. 1 would like to thank Professors Jay Pottenger and Robert Solomonfor their comments on early drafts. I owe an enormous debt to everyone who made time to talk to meabout their experiences with the eviction and removal process: the staff at the New Haven Departmentof Public Works, the New Haven Housing Court, the New Haven Legal Assistance Association,Community Mediation, the homeless shelters throughout New Haven, and especially the marshals,landlords, and tenants cited below. I could not have completed this project without their assistance.Professor Robert Ellickson deserves my deepest gratitude for offering encouragement and guidance onthis project, and for providing a model of intellectual curiosity about how law actually affects people'slives. Above all, thank you to my family for their endless support.

1 Throughout the article, the author includes information gathered from personal observations andinterviews in Connecticut during 2005 and 2006. Where relied upon in the article, the author cites tothe corresponding means by which he obtained this information. The names of removed tenants havebeen replaced in the article with a first name pseudonym to protect the tenant's identity. The identity ofall interviewed tenants and their associated pseudonyms are on file with the author.

2 Author's Personal Observation, Removal at 66 Gorham St., Hamden, Conn. (Mar. 9, 2006).

CONNECTICUT PUBLIC INTERESTLA WJOURNAL

She has no idea where they will stay tonight, or what will happen when herdisabled son returns from school.3

Legal scholars have studied residential evictions extensively, but havewritten surprisingly little on the final stage, when the marshal comes to putthe tenants out-what I call removal.4 Legal writing on evictions falls intofour broad categories. The first category comments on the rights of actorsin the legal process, including the right against retaliatory evictions5 andthe rights of particular groups.6 The second category comments on thefairness and constitutionality of current and proposed laws, notably lawsregarding evictions for drug use7 and for third-party criminal activity in theapartment.8 The third category proposes ideas for reform of the evictionprocess. 9 The fourth category describes what actually happens in the courseof the eviction actions-primarily who gets evicted,' ° how judicial systemshandle the eviction process," and what effect legal representation has onthe length of that process.' 2 This Note falls generally into the last category,

3 Author's Personal Observation, Removal at 83 Willis St., New Haven, Conn. (May 16,2006).4 1 use "removal" rather than "eviction" to emphasize that I am examining only that portion of the

process where the marshal removes the tenant from the property, and not the legal process morebroadly. I have coined this term: "removal."

5 See, e.g., George M. Armstrong, Jr. & John C. LaMaster, Retaliatory Eviction as Abuse ofRights: A Civilian Approach to Landlord-Tenant Disputes, 47 LA. L. REV. 1 (1986); James A. Hughes,Retaliatory Eviction, 102 MIL. L. REV. 143 (1983).

6 See, e.g., Paris R. Baldacci, Pushing the Law to Encompass the Reality of Our Families:Protecting Lesbian and Gay Families from Eviction from Their Homes-Braschi's FunctionalDefinition of "Family" and Beyond, 21 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 973 (1994).

7 See, e.g., Peter J. Saghir, Home Is Where the No-Fault Eviction Is: The Impact of the Drug Waron Families in Public Housing, 12 J.L. & POL'Y 369 (2003); Caroline Castle, Note, You Call That aStrike? A Post-Rucker Examination of Eviction from Public Housing Due to Drug Related CriminalActivity of a Third Party, 37 GA. L. REV. 1435 (2003); Howard J. Brookman, Note, ConstitutionalLaw--Fifth Amendment and Eighth Amendment-State Statute Allowing Eviction of Tenant Convictedof Drug Offense is not Punitive and, Therefore, Does Not Violate Either Double Jeopardy Clause orExcessive Fines Clause-Taylor v. Cisneros, 102 F3d 1334 (3d Cir. 1996), 27 SETON HALL L. REV.1161 (1997).

8 See Regina Austin, "Step on a Crack, Break Your Mother's Back": Poor Moms, Myths ofAuthority, and Drug-Related Evictions from Public Housing, 14 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 273 (2002);David C. Pulice, Supreme Court Holds Federal Drug Law Permits Evictions: Public Housing TenantNeed Not Have Knowledge of Drug Use, 4 LAW. J. 2 (2002); Nelson H. Mock, Note, Punishing theInnocent: No-Fault Eviction of Public Housing Tenants for the Actions of Third Parties, 76 TEx. L.REV. 1495 (1998); Alicia Weming Truman, Note, Unexpected Evictions: Why Drug Offenders ShouldBe Warned Others Could Lose Public Housing if They Plead Guilty, 89 IOWA L. REV. 1753 (2004).

9 See J. Royce Fichtner, Note, The Iowa Mobile Home Park Landlord-Tenant Relationship:Present Eviction Procedures and Needed Reforms, 53 DRAKE L. REV. 181 (2004); Randy G. Gerchick,Comment, No Easy Way Out: Making the Summary Process a Fairer and More Efficient Alternative toLandlord Self-Help, 41 UCLA L. REV. 759 (1994).

10 See, e.g., Chester Hartman & David Robinson, Evictions: The Hidden Housing Problem, 14HOUSING POL'Y DEBATE 461,467-68 (2003).

" See, e.g., KAREN DORAN ET AL., LAWYERS' COMMITTEE FOR BETTER HOUSING, No TIME FORJUSTICE: A STUDY OF CHICAGO'S EVICTION COURT (2003), http://lcbh.org/images/2008/10/chicago-eviction-court-study.pdf.

12 John R. Bolton & Stephen T. Holtzer, Note, Legal Services and Landlord-Tenant Litigation: ACritical Analysis, 82 YALE L.J. 1495, 1496-03 (1973); Steven Gunn, Eviction Defense for PoorTenants: Costly Compassion or Justice Served?, 13 YALE L. & POL'Y REV. 385, 415-16 (1995);

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UNDERSTANDING THE BITTER END OF EVICTIONS

and aims to fill two holes there. First, the vast majority of current writingdiscusses only rules governing the phases of an eviction action leading upto and including the trial or settlement, and stops short of the removal.Second, writing that does discuss executions typically stops after arecitation or analysis of the rules and does not offer empirical data on howthe process unfolds. 13

Popular depictions fill this gap in our empirical knowledge of evictionsand feed our imaginations. In Michael Moore's Roger & Me we see Flint,Michigan, Deputy Sheriff Fred Ross knock on a tenant's door and movethe family's belongings, Christmas tree and all, out to the curb onChristmas Eve.1 4 In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man we read the narrator'saccount of a removal in which two men carry out of the apartment a chairwith the tenant, a "motherly-looking old woman," still sitting in it.' 5 InAwake and Sing, Broadway drew on the scene of a family being removedto capture the despair of the Great Depression. 16 A Westlaw search of theNew York Times reveals that the media depicts the link between evictionsand homelessness as direct and immediate.' 7 Yet these popularrepresentations offer a one-dimensional view of the tail-end of evictionactions: desperate tenants getting the short end of the stick in ratherdramatic fashion.' 8 This project seeks not to replace these images, but todraw upon empirical research to provide a more nuanced account of whatactually happens in the final stage of evictions.

Landlords and tenants get to the final stage of evictions faster in theUnited States than they do in almost any other country. Although eachstate has its own laws, on average those laws permit an eviction to movefrom initiation to completion in just over a month and a half.'9 By contrast,the legal process in other countries takes an average of 254 days2° -

approximately four months in the UK and Belgium, 21 six months in

Robert Dames, Landlord-Tenant Litigation and the Impact of Free Legal Services 33-35 (1991)(unpublished manuscript, Yale Law School) (on file with author).

13 Hartman & Robinson, supra note 10, at 461 (noting the lack of data on removals).14 ROGER & ME (Warner Brothers 1989).15 RALPH ELLISON, INVISIBLE MAN 267 (Random House 1995) (1947).16 CLIFFORD ODETS, AWAKE AND SING (1935).17 Searching for "evict! /5 homeless!" on Westlaw reveals 250 hits in the New York Times alone.

Although not every search result draws a link between evictions and homelessness many do. See, e.g.,Ian Urbina, Keeping it a Secret as the Family Car Becomes a Home, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 2, 2006, at AI 1(collecting stories of families who had been evicted and immediately resorted to living in their cars);Leslie Kaufman, State Revamps Plan to Give Assistance to Homeless, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 11, 2004, atB I ("Perhaps the greatest impact on homelessness in the city will come from the funds that will go tofamilies facing eviction ... ").

IS Pacific Heights offers the only popular depiction this author could find that prompts theaudience to root for the landlord. PACIFIC HEIGHTS (Warner Brothers 1990).

'9 Simeon Djankov et al., Courts: The Lex Mundi Project app. at tbl.6 (Nat'l Bureau of Econ.Research, Working Paper No. 8890, 2002), available at http:www.nber.org/papers/w8890.20 Id. (based on a calculation of 109 countries).

21 id.

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Spain,22 nearly eight months in France,23 and twenty-one months in Italy.24

These countries use a number of formal legal mechanisms to delay theprocess further. In Ireland, for example, landlords may not initiate aneviction until rent is a full year late.25 In France, a landlord may notactually kick a tenant out of an apartment at any point during the winter-between November 1 and March 15.26

Economists suggest that the speedier U.S. process has salutary effectson the housing market: A fast eviction procedure decreases the risk alandlord faces of losing a significant portion of his revenue stream; this, inturn, means that property asset values increase.27 Consequently, peoplehave greater incentives to enter the market or continue in the market aslandlords. Furthermore, faster eviction laws generally mean that rents willbe lower, because of the higher long-run supply of housing available.28 Aspeedy procedure, thus, has putative benefits for prospective tenants, aswell as for landlords.

With these benefits, though, come costs. Being able to make it to thefinal phase of an eviction so quickly and readily exacts a toll on all partiesinvolved. Tenants face dignity costs that come with being kicked out oftheir homes and uprooted from their neighborhood. In addition, they incurthe monetary costs of having to find a new home, replace personalpossessions, and potentially miss time on their job.29 Landlords face theinconvenience of having to initiate a legal action and find new tenants; andthey incur the monetary costs of lost rent, marshals' fees, attorneys' fees. 30

Finally, the state bears costs associated with picking up and storingtenants' belongings.3'

Although the benefits of an eviction process that usher parties to thisend point relatively quickly can be measured and modeled,32 the costs ofsuch a process do not lend themselves to such tidy analysis. Therefore,what this process actually entails, who is involved, and how it affects thoseparties are all questions that have been under-studied. Answering thesequestions will complicate our understanding of the value tradeoffs our

22 Id.23 Id.24 Id.25 THE LAW REFORM COMMISSION, CONSULTATION PAPER ON GENERAL LAW OF LANDLORD AND

TENANT 181 (2003).26 Etienne Wasmer, Housing Market Discrimination, Housing Regulations and Intermediaries 6

(Am. Econ. Ass'n., Conference Paper, 2005), available at http://www.aeaweb.org/annual mtgpapers/2005/0107_0800 1404.pdf.27 Id. at 15-16.2 8 Id. at22.

29 See infra Parts III.C.2-3, III.D.3.30 See infra Parts III.C.3, III.D.1.31 See infra Part III.D.3.32 See generally Wasmer, supra note 26.

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legal system makes in this important area of law.This Note begins to fill that gap in the literature. It presents a case

study that gathers empirical research on removals. Specifically, this Noteseeks to understand the salient effects of this process upon all partiesinvolved in removals in one city. Focusing on how removals work in onecity allows this Note to give a rich account of the process-includingindividuals' attitudes toward and experiences of the process, the lives itaffects, and the personalities who play significant roles in it.

New Haven provides an excellent location for such a case study.Evictions and removals tend to occur in urban areas that have large rentalmarkets and high poverty rates.33 A large part of New Haven's populationlives in just such a setting. Seventy point four percent of New Haven'shousing units are renter-occupied.34 Just less than a quarter of the city'spopulation lives in poverty; 35 nearly a third of all housing units in the cityare subsidized;36 and nearly half of tenants in the city spend over 30% ofhousehold income on housing,37 a proportion considered to be at the limitof affordability. Given this large rental market and relatively high rates ofpoverty, New Haven sees a number of removals each year.38 The existenceof a well-run housing court that maintains an online database of its docketmeans that relevant data is collected and available on these cases.39

Furthermore, New Haven's laws governing removal are, in large part,middle-of-the road vis-A-vis other jurisdictions.40 This city, therefore,provides an ideal site for beginning to build an understanding of whathappens at the tail end of evictions.

Empirical findings from this case study suggest that the value tradeoffs

33 See infra Part IV.A.34 U.S. CENSUS BUR., CENSUS 2000 DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE HIGHLIGHTS: NEW HAVEN CITY,

CONNECTICUT (2000), http://factfmder.census.gov (search "Fast Access to Information" for "NewHaven City, Connecticut"; then follow the "2000" hyperlink under "Fact Sheet") [hereinafter FACTSHEET: 2000].

31 U.S. CENSUS BUR., 2006 AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY: SELECTED ECONOMICCHARACTERISTICS (NEW HAVEN CITY, CONNECTICUT (2006)), http://factfinder.census.gov (search"Fast Access to Information" for "New Haven City, Connecticut"; then select "EconomicCharacteristics-Show More") (reporting that 21.0% of all people in New Haven had incomes belowthe poverty level in the previous year).

36 CONN. DEP'T. OF ECON. & CMTY. DEV., 2007 AFFORDABLE HOUSING APPEALS PROCEDURELIST-AMENDED (2007), http://www.ct.gov/ecd/site/default.asp (follow "Publications" hyperlink; thenfollow "Affordable Housing Appeals List: 2007" hyperlink).

37 U.S. CENSUS BUR., PROFILE OF SELECTED HOUSING CHARACTERISTICS: 2000: NEW HAVENCITY, CONNECTICUT (2000), http://factfinder.census.gov (search "Fast Access to Information" for"New Haven City, Connecticut"; then follow the "2000" hyperlink under "Fact Sheet"; then select"Housing Characteristics-Show More"). See generally Janny Scott & Randal C. Archibold, AcrossNation, Housing Costs Rise as Burden, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 3, 2006, at Al ("The burden of housing costsin nearly every part of the country grew sharply from 2000 to 2005.").

3 See infra notes 65-70 and accompanying text.39 Online Housing Court Database--Housing Case Look-up, http://www.judst ate.ct.us/housing.

htm (last visited Nov. 7, 2008) (hereinafter Online Housing Court Database).40 See infra Part II.B.

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involved in opting for a fast eviction process are not quite as dramatic asone would expect. True, this process yields a relatively high amount ofremovals in a given year.41 These removals do inflict fairly high costs onwhat might be considered vulnerable populations-lower-income, urbantenants, especially single mothers and persons with mental illnesses.42 Suchfindings argue for a system that treats tenants with some sympathy. Thisstudy reveals that, in practice, the process is somewhat less harsh ontenants and somewhat more harsh on landlords than one might expect fromlooking only at the laws on the books. Landlords and the state actors oftenmove the process more slowly than the law suggests, granting tenantssomewhat of a reprieve.43 And these actors also take measures to mitigatethe costs of losing personal possessions.44 On the landlord side, eventhough the process still moves relatively quickly it inflicts large costs in the

45form of lost rent payments and substantial fees throughout the process.These landlords are often not wealthy and cannot always afford to absorbsuch costs.

46

This Note proceeds in six Parts. Part II briefly explains the lawsgoverning the eviction process-both the process by which landlords andtenants settle their dispute over possession of the property, and the processby which landlords remove tenants who have lost that dispute. This Partfocuses on New Haven laws, but also sets these laws in context bycomparing them to the laws of other jurisdictions. Part III examines howthe removal process unfolds in practice. This Part draws heavily uponoriginal data gleaned from various legal forms completed during removalsin 2005. To supplement these data, this Part also relies upon field research:observations of removals in New Haven and interviews with landlords,marshals, tenants, lawyers, and community agency workers. 7 Part IVdiscusses the demographics of removals, examining socioeconomicfeatures of landlords and tenants involved in removals. Part V drawslessons about what parts of this process work well and which could beimproved. Part VI concludes.

II. GETTING TO REMOVAL

Every state provides landlords a judicial procedure called "summaryprocess" for evicting tenants who have violated terms of their lease or

41 See infra notes 65-70 and accompanying text.41 See infra Part IVA.41 See infra Part III.A.44 See infra Part III.B.41 See infra Figure 3.46 See infra Part IV.B.4' For an explanation of research methodology, see Appendix 1.

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whose leases have expired.48 A number of works exhaustively cataloguethe steps of Connecticut summary process actions.49 This Part does notrepeat that information, but establishes the legal context in which removalstake place by briefly summarizing the phases of an eviction action in NewHaven. In addition, this Part highlights which parts of New Haven's lawsare unique and which are more common by comparing how otherjurisdictions handle this process.

A. New Haven

Landlords in Connecticut have a number of legal grounds for evictingtenants,50 but almost every eviction begins because the tenant has failed topay rent.51 The same holds true for New Haven evictions ending inremoval: 93% begin for nonpayment, 5% begin when the tenant fails toleave at the end of his lease, and 2% begin when the tenant violates theterms of his lease. 2 The law grants other grounds for eviction," but

48 See MARCIA STEWART ET AL., EVERY LANDLORD'S LEGAL GUIDE 447 (8th ed. 2006).49 See, e.g., PAUL MARzINoTTO, THE CONNECTICUT SUMMARY PROCESS MANUAL (1st ed. 1986

& 5th supp. 2002); Gunn, supra note 12, at app.; Mark Setterfield, The Eviction Process inConnecticut. A Comparative Analysis (Trinity Ctr. for Neighborhoods, Research Project 16, 1996)http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/tcn/ResearchReports/resrchl6.htm (last visited Nov. 7, 2008); StevenShepard, Withholding Rent in Connecticut: The History and Application of the "Habitability" Defenseto Eviction Actions (2005) (unpublished manuscript, Yale Law School) (on file with author). Thehousing courts also publish user's guides. STATE OF CONNECTICUT JUDICIAL BRANCH, A LANDLORD'SGUIDE TO SUMMARY PROCESS (EVICTION) (2008), http://jud.ct.gov/Publications/hm014.pdf; STATE OFCONNECTICUT JUDICIAL BRANCH, A TENANT'S GUIDE TO SUMMARY PROCESS EVICTION: STEPS IN ANEVICTION ACTION (2007), http://jud.ct.gov/Publications/hm0l5.pdf. Community agencies also publishguides. See, e.g., LEGAL ASSISTANCE RES. CTR. OF CONN., TENANTS' RIGHTS: EVICTION (2008),http://www.larcc.org/pamphlets/housing/treviction.htm (last visited Nov. 7, 2008).50 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-23(a) (2007).

51 Past studies of New Haven and other jurisdictions have concluded that nonpayment of rentaccounts for more than ninety percent of all eviction actions. See, e.g., Daines, supra note 12, at 24;Gunn, supra note 12, at 397; Rafael Podolsky, A Study of Eviction Cases in Hartford." A Follow-UpReview of the Harford Housing Court 7 tbls. 6&7 (1995) (unpublished report, Legal AssistanceResource Center) (on file with author); Rafael Podolsky, A Study of Eviction Cases in New London:Case Processing in a Non-Housing Court District 3 tbl. 4 (1992) (unpublished report, Legal AssistanceResource Center) (on file with author).52Online Housing Court Database, supra note 39. These calculations are based on an examinationof 105 eviction cases. I referred to the first 105 eviction goods inventories from the Department ofPublic Works' archives for the year 2005, and searched for each eviction by parties' last names.Various State Marshals, Eviction Goods Inventory (Jan. I-Dec. 31, 2005) [hereinafter Eviction GoodsInventories 2005] (on file with author).

53 A landlord may obtain a Notice to Quit in the following circumstances:(1) when a rental agreement or lease of such property, whether in writing or by

parol, terminates for any of the following reasons: (A) By lapse of time;(B) by reason of any expressed stipulation therein; (C) violation of therental agreement or lease or of any rules or regulations adopted inaccordance with section 47a-9 or 21-70; (D) nonpayment of rent within thegrace period provided for residential property in section 47a-15a or 21-83;(E) nonpayment of rent when due for commercial property; (F) violation ofsection 47a-1 1 or subsection (b) of section 21-82; (G) nuisance, as definedin section 47a-32, or serious nuisance, as defined in section 47a-15 or 21-

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landlords rarely use these.54

Before starting an eviction, a landlord must serve the tenant with aNotice to Quit, stating the reason for eviction and asking the tenant to leavethe property within three days.5 5 If the tenant does not leave after thisperiod, a landlord may start an eviction.56 He does so by having aSummons and Complaint served on the tenant-for service of all papers,the law calls for in-hand or abode service by marshals, not landlords. 7 Atthis point, the landlord and tenant are adversaries in a civil suit and mustfollow certain procedures as they head toward trial.58 The process may notescalate to trial for two main reasons. First, the tenant may not show up fora court appearance, in which case the landlord can get a default judgment.5 9

Or, second, the parties may stipulate an agreement at a mediation sessionwith a Housing Specialist immediately before trial.6 ° If neither of theseevents comes to pass, the parties go to housing court and the judge

61eventually renders a decision.If a judgment enters against the tenant at any point, or if the tenant

violates the stipulated agreement, then the landlord receives anExecution-a legal form granting permission to have the tenant removedfrom his property.62 To enforce this legal entitlement, the landlord mustthen ask a state marshal to serve this Execution on the tenant.63 Twenty-four hours after using reasonable efforts to serve the tenant, the marshalmay return to the property to remove the tenant and all of his belongings.64

A surprisingly large number of cases were initiated in 2005 and asurprisingly high proportion of them resulted in actual removals. In thatyear, marshals served 2,007 Summons and Complaint forms in the City of

80; or (2) when such premises, or any part thereof, is occupied by one whonever had a right or privilege to occupy such premises; or (3) when oneoriginally had the right or privilege to occupy such premises but such rightor privilege has terminated.... CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-23(a) (2007).

14 Searching the same sample of 105 eviction cases as used in supra note 52 revealed no instanceswhere landlords used these grounds.

55 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-23(a) (2007). In nonpayment cases, the marshal may not serve thisnotice on the tenant before the fifteen-day grace period for payment has lapsed. Id § 47a-15. Neitherthe New Haven Housing Court nor the marshals record how many Notices to Quit marshals serve ontenants in a given year, so it is difficult to determine how often parties resolve their differences at thisstage.56 Id. § 47a-42.

51 Id. § 52-57(a) ("Except as otherwise provided, process in any civil action shall be served byleaving a true and attested copy of it, including the declaration or complaint, with the defendant, or athis usual place of abode, in this state."). Anecdotal data suggests that marshals typically comply withthese obligations. See infra notes 122-128 & accompanying text.

5 CONN. GEN. STAT. §§ 47a-23, 47a-26 (2007).59 Id. §§ 47a-26-26a.60 Id. § 47a-69.61 Id. § 47a-26d.62 Id.63 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42a(b) (2007).

64 Id. § 47a-42(b).

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65 6New Haven, representing 6.1% of the city's 33,16766 residential rentalunits.67 Executions issued in over a third of these cases-757.68 Just undera half of tenants receiving these Executions-377-moved themselves andtheir possessions out of their apartment before removal day;69 theremainder-380-were removed by a marshal.7 °

When a marshal removes a tenant, he is responsible for placing thetenant's belongings on the curb.71 Then "[t]he chief executive officer ofthe town shall remove and store" these belongings for fifteen days.72 TheNew Haven chief executive, or mayor, delegates this responsibility to theDepartment of Public Works (DPW),73 and the DPW notifies tenants thatthey have twenty-two days to retrieve their possessions.74 If tenants want toretrieve their belongings during this period, Connecticut law dictates thatthe municipality may charge tenants for the cost of storage.75 Somemunicipalities do SO, 7 6 but New Haven does not.77 A legal aid lawyer7 8 andthe New Haven Housing Court Clerk79 claim that the decision not tocharge tenants is mostly political-the City wants to extend a courtesy tothose seen as the "poorest of the poor." The decision not to charge tenantsis also practical-if the City charged for pickup, the retrieval rates woulddecrease and need for storage space would increase.80 If the tenant does not

61 Interview with Suzanne Colasanto, Clerk, New Haven Housing Court, in New Haven, Conn.

(Oct. 13, 2006).66 FACT SHEET: 2000, supra note 34.67 A relatively negligible portion were served on commercial tenants; and tenants receiving more

than one Summons and Complaint a year did not account for much of the overall total. TelephoneInterview with Michael D'Andrea, Assistant Clerk, New Haven Housing Court (Nov. 21, 2006).

68 Memoranda from Frank Blee, Eviction Warehouse Manager, New Haven Dept. of Pub. Works(June 2005 & June 2006) [hereinafter DPW Performance Indicators] (on file with author).69 CONN. SUPER. CT., EXECUTION FOR POSSESSION (Jan. I-Dec. 31, 2005) [hereinafter SUMMARYPROCESS EXECUTIONS].

70 id.71 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(a) (2007).72 Id. § 47a-42(a).73 NEW HAVEN, CONN., CODE § 2-276 (2007).74 Memorandum from the DPW, City of New Haven on Notice to Evictees Reclaiming Household

Goods Moved During Eviction [hereinafter Notice to Evictees] (on file with author).75 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(c) (2007).76 See, e.g., Telephone Interview with Sharon, Clerk, East Haven Dep't of Pub. Works (Nov. 13,

2006); Telephone Interview with John Cabral, Jr., Program Specialist, Hamden Cmty. Serv. Dep't(Nov. 13, 2006); Telephone Interview with Ronda Carroll, Clerk, Hartford Dep't of Pub. Works (Nov.13, 2006); Telephone Interview with Emily Barbero, Clerk, Bldg. Dep't of the Town of Torrington(Nov. 13, 2006).77 See infra Part III.D.3.

78 Interview with Shelly White, Attorney, New Haven Legal Assistance Association, in NewHaven, Conn. (Dec. 14, 2006).

79 Interview with Suzanne Colasanto, Clerk, New Haven Housing Court, in New Haven, Conn.(Dec. 15, 2006).

80 In Hartford where tenants must pay storage fees, for example, only seven to ten percent oftenants retrieve their goods. Telephone Interview with Ronda Carroll, supra note 6. For acounterexample, see the Town of Torrington, where thirty to fifty percent of tenants retrieve their

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retrieve his property within the set time frame, the town sells it at public81auction.

B. Comparison to Other Jurisdictions

Each state has developed its own eviction procedures and laws. On aprocedural level, states process evictions in slightly different fora-housing sessions of trial courts, municipal courts, small claims courts. 82

More substantively, states choose different points at which to slow down orspeed up the legal proceedings: One state may impose delays at theopening of litigation while another opts to slow down the process at theenforcement phase.83 But, taken as a whole, most state laws governing thedispute for possession share key attributes: they call for landlords to notifytenants at each step and they allow tenants ample opportunity to state theircases, while providing speedy resolution.84 In terms of legal process then,removals across the country often share similar back-stories.

At the removal phase, state laws and procedures differ on a number ofdimensions. 85 But New Haven's laws are roughly in the middle-of-the roadin terms of the extent to which they favor landlords or tenants. Some ofNew Haven's laws favor tenants and/or disfavor landlords more than doother jurisdictions. Other parts of New Haven's eviction laws favorlandlords and/or disfavor tenants more than do other jurisdictions.

Take removal of the tenant's belongings, for instance. New Havenrequires the marshal to hire a private mover to take the tenant's goods outof the apartment. The marshal then bills the landlord for the cost of themovers. In New York City or Minnesota, by contrast, a landlord cansimply choose to take possession of any goods the tenant leaves in therental property, and the landlord can store those goods in the rentalproperty.86 In North Carolina or Wyoming, the landlord may even disposeof any personal belongings the tenant leaves behind.87 These differences

belongings despite having to pay for storage. Memorandum from Legal Assistance Resource Center onRedemption Rate by Town, 2006 (on file with author).

81 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(c) (2007).12 See STEWART ET AL., supra note 48, at 394-96.83 Rhode Island moves eviction actions into court more slowly than does Connecticut;

Massachusetts slows down cases at the end by granting longer automatic Stays of Execution. SeeSetterfield, supra note 49.

84 See generally STEWART ET AL., supra note 48 (collecting eviction laws from all fifty states).85 States have developed their own rules on service of papers, the length of the waiting period

between Execution and removal, who moves the tenant's belongings, how long a tenant's belongingsmust be stored, and how tenants may retrieve removed possessions. See Appendix XXX.

86 See, e.g., New York City Court Housing Part: Eviction, http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/eviction.shtml (last visited Oct. 12, 2008); MINN. STAT. § 504B.365 (2002). For an explanationof Minnesota removal laws, see LAWRENCE R. MCDONOUGH, RESIDENTIAL UNLAWFUL DETAINERAND EVICTION DEFENSE (10th ed. 2008), http://povertylaw.homestead.com/ResidentialUnlawfulDetainer.html.

87N.C. GEN. STAT. § 42-25.9 (2001); WYO. STAT. § 1-21-1210 (2007).

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between New Haven and these other jurisdictions mean two things. First,they mean that the landlord in New Haven generally has to incur higherexpenses to deal with tenants' belongings in the removal process. Second,it means that the tenant in New Haven is probably more likely to have anopportunity to retrieve belongings he has left behind than is the tenant inthese other jurisdictions.

Once the tenant's belongings are removed from the apartment, NewHaven's laws are more favorable toward the tenant than most, in someways. New Haven allows tenants to retrieve their goods free of charge, forinstance. 88 This gives people who probably do not have much money anopportunity to mitigate their losses. In some other jurisdictions-Arizona,89 Delaware, 90 Oklahoma9'-though, tenants have to reimburse allparties that incurred moving and storage fees before regaining possessionof their belongings. This policy probably deters more tenants fromretrieving their belongings than does New Haven's policy, because the costof picking up possessions is a deterrent to picking up possessions.

But New Haven can be stricter toward tenants than other jurisdictionsin some ways. Removed tenants in New Haven legally have only twenty-two days to retrieve their possessions from the city warehouse.92 InMassachusetts, though, tenants get six months-approximately eight timesas long-to gather themselves and find a way to retrieve their

93possessions. 9

Although the laws governing specific aspects of evictions vary fromplace to place, New Haven provides one useful case study.

III. REMOVALS IN NEW HAVEN

To give a complete picture of removals, this Part begins before theremoval day and ends after that day.

A. Scheduling a Removal

After the New Haven housing court issues an Execution, the finalphase of an eviction begins with the scheduling of the removal. Inscheduling a removal, a variety of actors typically delay the process at leastonce or twice before the removal day. Although the laws dictate thatmarshals may remove tenants as soon as twenty-four hours after serving anExecution, data show that removals actually happen an average of twenty

88 Interview with Frank Blee, Eviction Warehouse Manager, New Haven Dept. of Pub. Works, inNew Haven, Conn. (Oct. 3, 2006).

89 See, e.g., ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 12-1565(b) (2003)." DEL. CODE tit. 25, § 5715(e) (2006).91 OKLA. STAT. tit. 41, § 130(D) (1999 & Supp. 2008).92 Notice to Evictees, supra note 74.9 See, e.g., MASS. GEN. LAWS ch. 239, § 3 (2004 & Supp. 2007).

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days after the judge signs the Execution,94 with the median period beingseventeen days.95 This unscripted delay gives the tenants a windfall of timeto live rent-free. At the same time, it increases the cost to the landlord byamplifying the period of lost rent.

1. Landlords

A landlord has few affirmative duties once the eviction has reached itsfinal enforcement stages. But he can still shape the process, primarily bydeciding how quickly to effectuate the removal. To move an evictionforward, a landlord must first hire a marshal to serve the Execution on thetenant.96 As a result of a 2000 lobbying effort by landlords to cap marshalfees, 97 marshals now charge statutorily mandated rates 98-$125 for the firsthour of removal and $75 for each additional hour.99 So, landlords do notcomparison shop based on price. Instead, most landlords choose a marshalwhom they already know. 100 If they do not know one, they can contact thestate marshal association and get a list of marshals based in their area.' l

Next, the landlord must decide when to have the marshal serve theExecution on the tenant. 10 2 Most landlords have the marshal serve theExecution on the tenant immediately.10 3 Then once the marshal serves theExecution, a landlord must decide how quickly to press for the actualremoval of his tenants. 0 4 When they talk to the marshal, landlordstypically indicate whether they want the tenant out immediately, orwhether they want to delay. 0 5 Foot-dragging at the end of this processmight seem counterintuitive, given that the landlord has already lost rentand delays mean more lost rent. Nevertheless, some landlords choose todelay. 0 6 One landlord who had already lost two months of rent asked themarshal to serve his tenants with an Execution, then instructed the marshal

94 To arrive at this number, I calculated the average (mean) number of days between the date thejudge entered on an Execution and the date the state marshal entered on the inventory he completed atthe actual removal. SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69; Eviction Goods Inventories 2005,supra note 52.

95 SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69.96 See CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42 (2007).97 Telephone Interview with Robert Miller, State Marshal & President of the Conn. Marshal's

Ass'n (Dec. 14, 2006).98 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 52-261(b) (2007).99 Miller reports that he previously charged $100 per hour and he knew of many marshals who

charged much more than that. Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 97.100 Id101 Id.102 See CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(a) (2007).103 Interview with Tommy Russo, State Marshal, in New Haven, Conn. (May 23, 2006).

105 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 97.106 id.

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to give the tenant three or four weeks to vacate the property. 10 7 In additionto demonstrating sympathy for the tenants, this decision intended to servethe landlord's financial interest. The cost of removing tenants is quitehigh-near $1000--often higher than the cost of a month of lost rent. 08

Therefore, landlords might give tenants time to move out of an apartmentin order to save money on moving fees.

There are other reasons the process may be delayed at this point, aswell. In general, larger landlord entities delay the process more than dosmaller ones. 10 9 Landlords may be split into four different categories ofentities. Roughly in descending order of the overall size of enterprise, theyare: (1) the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH); (2) cooperatives;(3) persons arranged in partnerships, corporations, or limited liabilitycorporations; and (4) individuals who own properties alone or with anotherindividual. Larger landlords take longer than do smaller landlords toremove a tenant after the Execution is issued:

Figure 1 110

Type of Landlord Average number of daysfrom issuance of

Execution to removal oftenant

HANH 27Cooperatives 28Partnerships/corporations/LLCs 21Individuals 17

Individual members of the larger entities face relatively weakincentives to propel the eviction forward. A single member of the HousingAuthority, for instance, will not personally realize increased income frommoving an eviction to its final stage quickly. An individual landlord, bycontrast, will personally realize all of the benefit of evicting a tenant andfilling the apartment with a rent-paying tenant. The speed with whichvarious entities act at this stage in the process roughly reflects theserelative incentives: The Housing Authority and Cooperatives take anaverage of twenty-seven and twenty-eight days, respectively, to go fromissuance of an Execution to removal; partnerships, corporations and limited

107 Author's Personal Observation, Removal at 78 Lilac St., New Haven, Conn. (May 18, 2006).'o' See infra Part III.C.3.0 9 See infra Part III.A. 1; Figure 1.t0 SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69. Although not technically landlords, banks

and mortgage companies also initiate evictions when foreclosing on a property. On average, thoseactors take 24 days from issuance of Execution to removal of tenant. Id. and Eviction GoodsInventories 2005, supra note 52.

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liability companies take twenty-one days; and individual owners take justseventeen days.111 Thus, delay at this stage results, in some cases, from thesomewhat dulled incentives larger landlord entities face.

2. Marshals

Marshals have two fairly circumscribed jobs during this phase of theeviction: to schedule the removal with DPW; and to serve the tenant withthe Execution. In fulfilling this latter duty, marshals can and do behave inways that affect the landlords' and tenants' experiences at removal.

To become a marshal, someone must submit an application, pass anexamination, and be appointed by the State Marshal Commission.112 Onceappointed, marshals operate as independent contractors, compensatedpurely on a fee-for-service basis.'13 The fees are ample, as marshals basedin New Haven County made an average of $103,000 and a median of$77,000 in 2005.114 For these fees they serve process, carry out removals,and collect debts anywhere in the state.1 15 Since they must find their ownclients for this work1 16 and cannot cut prices to attract business,1 17 marshalshave strong financial incentives to do whatever it takes to keep theirclients-landlords, in the case of removals-happy.

The first thing marshals must do for their clients is contact the DPW toschedule an eviction," 8 a straightforward duty. Once he receives anExecution, the marshal calls Frank Blee, manager of the DPW's evictionwarehouse, and makes an appointment for the next available time with aCity moving truck.119 Any decisions to delay this call to DPW are made bythe landlord and are not within the marshal's discretion. 120

The marshal exercises some discretion in serving the tenant with theExecution. He must decide how and when to serve it. The law clearlyprescribes in-hand or abode service. 121 Marshals report using in-handservice about half of the time.122 This is not fail-proof, though. In somecases, especially when the tenant does not speak English, the marshal

111 Id.112 CoNN. AGENCIES REGS. § 6-38b-3-5 (2006); The eight-person commission consists of persons

appointed by various government officials, including the Chief Justice, representatives and thegovernor. CONN. GEN. STAT. § 6-38b (2007).

"3 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 6-33 (2007) (Marshals receive one-dollar annual salary from the state);CoNN. GEN. STAT. § 6-38a (2007).

114 Office of State Ethics, State Marshals 2005 Annual Statement of Income (on file with author).115 CoNN. GEN. STAT. § 52-261 (2007).116 Interview with Robert Miller, State Marshal & President of the Conn. Marshal's Ass'n, in New

Haven, Conn. (May 16, 2006).17 See CONN. GEN. STAT. § 52-261 (2007).118 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.119 For discussion of the details of scheduling a moving truck, see infra Part III.A.3.120 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.121 CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(b).122 Interview with Tommy Russo, State Marshal, in New Haven, Conn. (May 31, 2006).

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cannot determine if he is handing the Execution to the right person. 123

When the marshal and tenant do speak a common language, some marshalstake the opportunity to explain the process to the tenant, and advise them tomove their valuable possessions out of the property before the scheduledremoval.1 24 If the tenant is not home, marshals report that they insert theExecution into the apartment under the front door1 25 -this satisfies therequirements of abode service, and this practice seems to be effective.Tenants confirm that they typically received their Execution in their handor under their door, 126 and a legal aid lawyer reports almost neverchallenging an eviction for improper service of the Execution, becausetenants rarely register that complaint. 127

3. Department of Public Works

The New Haven DPW plays a key role in determining when a tenantwill be removed from his apartment. By statute, the City must pick up thetenant's possessions at the curb, and in New Haven the DPW fulfills thisduty.128 Instead of, say, the marshal moving a tenant's possessions to thecurb in the morning and the City picking them up in the afternoon,marshals carry out removals based on when the DPW can send a truck tosit at the curb to take immediate possession of the tenant's belongings. 29

So the DPW acts as the bottleneck in scheduling a removal.Evictions Warehouse Manager Blee dispatches the DPW trucks. He

sends one of two large moving trucks to accompany marshals on removalsand tries to schedule each truck for more than one removal eachmorning.13 ° But even with two trucks at his disposal, he cannot keep upwith the pace of removals.13' When a marshal calls, Blee typically has toschedule the removal at least a full week later.' 32 Thus, the DPW's normalscheduling constraints tend to grant tenants another windfall of time.

It is not rare for the DPW to delay removals even longer than a week insome cases. When a truck is out of commission, as was the case for muchof Spring 2006 after an employee backed a dump truck into one movingtruck, 133 the DPW might not be able to accommodate a marshal's request

123 Id.124 Interview with Gerald Capiello, Jr., State Marshal, in New Haven, Conn. (Mar. 28, 2006).125 Interview with Tommy Russo, supra note 122.126 See, e.g., Telephone Interview with Kelly, Removed Tenant (Aug. 28, 2006); Telephone

Interview with Veronica, Removed Tenant (May 31, 2006). In total, I interviewed fifteen tenants.127 Interview with Shelly White, supra note 78.128 See supra notes 72-73 and accompanying text.129 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.130 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.131 Id.132 Id.

1 Interview with Frank Blee, Eviction Warehouse Manager, New Haven Dep't of Pub. Works(Mar. 27, 2006).

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for two weeks or more. Furthermore, the DPW has only a limited staff tocomplete a wide variety of tasks, some of them urgent. The employees whodrive the eviction trucks, for instance, also drive the snow plows in thewinter.134 So, when a snowstorm hits New Haven and the city needs to beplowed, Blee cancels evictions scheduled for that day, and reschedulesthem for the next available day.135

In some cases, the DPW makes a more deliberate decision to delayremovals. Although the DPW technically is charged with carrying outremovals whenever necessary, the City adheres to a tradition of imposing amoratorium around Christmas. 136 This unwritten rule has endured from themid- 1 990s when New Haven County Sheriff Henry Healey used to set thepolicies for removals. He never tried to make this moratorium law, but hehad so much control over his colleagues that he simply told the sheriffsthat they were not to carry out any removals around Christmas and NewYear's out of respect for the tenants. 3 7 With the decentralized marshalsystem replacing the sheriff system, no one person today has as muchinfluence over the officials carrying out the removals as did Healey.'38 But,data suggest that the DPW still adheres to Healey's instructions.Combining data from both 2004 and 2005, the first ten days of Decembersaw fourteen tenants removed, the second ten days saw twenty-threetenants removed, and the final ten days saw zero tenants removed. 139

Of course, this moratorium and the one around Thanksgiving 140

provide DPW employees with much appreciated holiday breaks. But theyserve a larger purpose, too. Through these moratoria the City extendstenants a courtesy. Blee has gotten the sense that these moratoria are anexpression of the Mayor's sympathy for soon to be removed tenants. 141

134 id.135 Author's Personal Observations, Removal at 74 Orange St., New Haven, Conn. (May 16,

2006).136 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88; Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.117 A number of interviewees recalled Sheriff Healey's moratorium. See, e.g., Interview with John

Pottenger, Clinical Professor, Yale Law Sch., in New Haven, Conn. (April 10, 2006); Interview withPeter Criscuolo, State Marshal, in New Haven, Conn. (Mar. 27, 2006).

138 Deputy sheriffs used to serve process and carry out removals. The sheriff system came underattack in the late 1990s. Deputy sheriffs advocated for reform because they were appointed by theelected high sheriffs in each county, and therefore could not plan their lives beyond the next election.Dave Altimari, Sheriff System: End of the Line?, HARTFORD COURANT, Oct. 29, 2000, at B1.Outsiders criticized the sheriff system for being a corrupt, patronage-ridden vestige of countygovernment. Id. In a 2000 referendum, Connecticut voters scrapped the sheriff system and legislatorsreplaced it with a system of life-tenured marshals. Dave Altimari, Voters Abolish Centuries-Old SheriffSystem, HARTFORD COURANT, Nov. 8, 2000, at A2 1. Now to become a marshal, someone must submitan application, pass an examination and be appointed by the State Marshal Commission. CONN. GEN.STAT. § 6-38f (2006). Once appointed, marshals operate as independent contractors, compensatedpurely on a fee-for-service basis. CONN. GEN. STAT. § 6-38a(a) (2006).

139 Various State Marshals, Eviction Goods Inventory (Dec. 1-Dec. 31, 2004 & Dec. 1-Dec. 31,2005) (on file with author).

140 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.141 ld.

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B. Preparing To Be Removed

Most tenants appear to understand the ramifications of their impendingremoval. A tiny minority obtain their knowledge from attorneys: under 2%of removed tenants had legal representation during the first phase of theeviction. 142 Some learn about the process from the marshal who serves theExecution. 43 Many ask friends and neighbors about the process;' 44 andothers know about removals through past experience. 145 Through thesevarious sources, tenants appear to understand the basics: they will beremoved, their property will be packed and stored, and they can retrievetheir property later.

If most tenants appear to understand what happens to them and to theirpossessions in a removal, the next question is what they do in the face ofthat knowledge. As stated above, half of tenants move out of the propertybefore the removal day.146 Those who do not move immediately might tryto delay the removal by asking the landlord for a few extra days to movetheir belongings, themselves. 47 Granting this request typically serves thelandlord's interest since it allows the landlord to save the marshal's fee andmoving costs associated with removals. 48 Some tenants recognize thelandlord's circumstance and use last-minute pleas as a simple way toextend their rent-free living. 149

Those with children might use the time between Execution andremoval to arrange for the children to stay elsewhere. Roxanne sent herdaughter to live with her grandmother; 50 Sheryl sent her daughter to livewith a family friend.' 51 Both said they did this because they had not yetfound a place to live in the school district, but did not want to transfer theirdaughters to a new school in the middle of the year.'

As for possessions, most removed tenants leave a significant amount ofvaluable items in the apartment. 5 They understand that they need not fear

142 This number was calculated based on an analysis of the first 271 individuals removed in 2005.SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69; Online Housing Court Database, supra note 39. 1obtained the parties' names from the Summary Process Executions in the Department of Public Works'archives. I then searched the Housing Court Database using these party names. The Housing CourtDatabase indicates whether a party to an eviction was represented by legal counsel.

143 Interview with Gerald Capiello, Jr., supra note 124.'" See Rudy Kleysteuber, Repeat Play in Connecticut Eviction Actions: A Quantitative and

Qualitative Analysis 46 (2006) (unpublished manuscript, Yale Law School) (on file with author).145 Interview with Gerald Capiello, Jr., supra note 124.146 See SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69 and accompanying text.147 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.148 Interview with Robert Miller, State Marshal & President of the Conn. Marshal's Ass'n, in New

Haven, Conn. (Mar. 9, 2006).'49 See, e.g., Author's Personal Observation, supra note 107."S0 Interview with Roxanne, Removed Tenant, in New Haven, Conn. (April 10, 2006).15' Interview with Sheryl, Removed Tenant, in New Haven, Conn. (May 3, 2006).152

Id.' See infra Figure 2.

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losing their possessions if they do not pack them, because the landlordpays to pack these items-a roughly $250 expense 154 and the DPW storesthem for over a month-private storage would cost $200.151 Miller reportsthat some portion of tenants take full advantage of the system and leaveeverything behind in order to get a free move while they are relocating orto increase the landlord's moving bill;156 others pack some of theirpossessions and leave only their unwanted possessions and trash. 157

Although a couple of community agencies help tenants avoid evictionsbefore they start and help tenants navigate the legal battle, remarkably fewcommunity agencies play any role in helping tenants relocate in the daysbetween an Execution and a removal. 158

C. RemovalEventually, it comes time for the marshal to remove the tenant. Three

features of the process are particularly striking. Two of these featuresillustrate the serious toll this process takes on its participants: how manyvaluable possessions tenants leave behind; and how costly the process is totenants and landlords. 159 The third feature, though, shows that the processis somewhat less emotionally provocative than one might expect: Despitebeing high-stakes procedures, removals almost always occur withoutresistance or violence. 160

1. The Removal ProcessJust before a removal the landlord typically checks one last time that

spending money on this process is necessary. 161 He might drive by theproperty late the night before or early the morning of the removal to see ifit looks like the tenants are still living there. 162 The landlord cannot anddoes not enter the property, but if he can determine that the tenants have

154 Interview with Ron Crosby, Owner, Crosby's Moving Co., in New Haven, Conn. (May 17,2006) (assuming an average apartment requires three movers).

155 Id.156 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.157 See infra Part III.C.2. (discussing in greater detail what types of possessions the tenant

typically leaves for the City to collect).158 New Haven Legal Assistance Association helps some tenants navigate the eviction process so

as to delay or avoid removal. Community Mediation runs a Rent Bank to help tenants avoid evictions,and it provides qualifying tenants with security deposits to help them move on to another apartment.COMMUNITY MEDIATION, ANNUAL REPORT 2005 8-9 (2006). But none of the eighty-two tenants whoused the Rent Bank program in 2005 were at the Execution phase; and very few, if any at all, of theninety-four families using the security deposit program were at this phase. Id. at 8-10; TelephoneInterview with Cristina Urrutia, Hous. Case Manager, Cmty. Mediation (Oct. 11, 2006).159 See infra Part III.C.2-3.

160 See infra Part III.C.4.161 Interview with Tommy Russo, supra note 103.162 id.

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left and moved themselves out entirely, he might cancel the removal at thelast minute. 163 If the tenant has left any possessions whatsoever, though,the landlord may go ahead with the removal in order to reclaim possessionof the property.164 So last-minute cancellations do happen, but onlyrarely. 1

65

Removal days start early. 166 For the first one of the day, the marshaltypically arrives just before 7:30 a.m. Once the DPW truck and moversarrive in front of the property, the marshal knocks on the front door. If thetenant does not answer, the marshal uses the landlord's key to enter theapartment. In a quarter of removals in 2005 a marshal found a tenanthome. 167 When the tenant is home, the marshal informs the tenant he isthere to complete the eviction and explains that the tenant must leaveimmediately. 68 Tenants normally are expecting to see the marshal, butrarely are prepared to leave right away. 169 Some are not fully dressed; mostrequest time to gather their possessions.170 Marshals exercise somediscretion in how they respond:' 7' One gives the tenant only enough timeto find his coat and wallet, but most others are sensitive to the situation andallow the tenant to remain in the house for the duration of the removal inorder to pack whatever belongings he wants to take himself. Once themarshal explains the process to the tenant and surveys the apartment, hesignals to the movers to start packing the tenants' belongings. 172

2. PossessionsMovers trudge into the property with cardboard boxes. They pack

everything tenants have left aside from perishables, paint, chemicals, plantsand garbage. 173 And they construe "garbage" narrowly. 174 Broken fans, oldbills, and worn stuffed animals all get packed. The owner of one movingcompany said he and his employees never throw anything away: "To youit's garbage, but to them it's all they have, so we still have to protect it

163 Id.164 CoNN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42 (2007).165 Interview with Tommy Russo, supra note 103.166 Unless otherwise noted in this paragraph, the description is based upon the author's personal

observations of the eviction process at 109 James St., 83 Willis St., 74 Orange St. and 78 Lilac St. inNew Haven, Connecticut on March 27, May 16, May 16, and May 18, 2006, respectively.

167 Eviction Goods Inventories 2005, supra note 52. Eviction Goods Inventories indicate whetherthe tenant was home on the day of removal.

168 Interview with Gerald Capiello, Jr., supra note 124.169 id.

170 id.

171 Id.172 Id.; Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116; Interview with Tommy Russo, supra note

103.173 Interview with Ron Crosby, supra note 154. Crosby's Moving Company sends a moving crew

on removals almost every day.174 Id.

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all."'75 This attitude means that tenants do not face much risk of losingtheir possessions outright in the move.

As mentioned above, tenants take different approaches to theimpending removal of their possessions.176 Adina, for example, treated it asa free move. A single woman suffering from asthma, she could not moveher own belongings and could not afford to pay someone to do it. She wasin the hospital at the time of her removal, but sent her nephew to meet themarshal at the apartment and to pack up two boxes of clothing for her touse until she reclaimed her possessions from the warehouse. When askedwhy Adina did not have her belongings moved before removal, her nephewsaid, "Why would she? They're going to move it and keep it for freeanyway."' 177 Others treat the eviction as free trash removal. They takeeverything they want, and leave the rest behind. In some cases, the tenantswill actually sign a statement consenting to the City delivering the goodsstraight to the landfill. 78 This only happened in a small handful of cases in2005, though.179

The majority of tenants, though, leave valuable, hard-to-move itemsbehind.

Figure 2 lists items and the percentage of cases where a marshal foundthese items left in an apartment:

Figure 2 180

Item Percentage of cases in which at leastone of this item was left behind

Chair/ couch 88%Mattress/ box spring 78%Large table (kitchen or 76%coffee)TV 63%Dresser/ Bureau 45%

Tenants leaving loose items that got packed into boxes had, onaverage, eighteen boxes worth of goods, with the median being 12boxes.' 8' Other items frequently moved during a removal include: washers,

175 d.

176 Unless otherwise noted in this paragraph, the description is based upon the author's personalobservations of the eviction process at 109 James St. and 139 Monroe St. in New Haven, Connecticuton March 27, 2006.

177 Interview with Jorge, Nephew of Removed Tenant, in New Haven, Conn. (Mar. 27, 2006).178 Eviction Goods Inventories 2005, supra note 52.179 id.

1"0 Analysis of 50 randomly selected removals from various months throughout 2005. EvictionGoods Inventories 2005, supra note 52.

181 Id.

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dryers, refrigerators, stoves, air conditioners, microwaves, vacuums,bicycles, and children's toys.182

Movers carry the possessions to the curb where they hand them off toDPW workers. 183 As this happens, the marshal inventories everything thatgoes into the truck. 184 At the end of the removal, the tenant (if present) anda DPW worker sign the inventory.185 No statute mandates this practice,Marshals do this to avoid disputes. Before the advent of these inventories,some tenants would go to the warehouse to pick up their belongings andclaim that a nice television or couch was missing, and try to get the City orthe marshal to buy them a new one. 186 Now, if tenants do this, Blee showsthe tenant the inventory and that usually ends the dispute. 187

3. CostsCosts are harder to quantify for tenants than for landlords. For the

tenant, a removal represents not only the sudden loss of a home, but alsothe loss of some dignity. Jane struggled to beat a drinking problem andkeep her life together. 188 When she got removed from her apartment, theprocess humiliated her and set her back because she felt it announced tothe whole world that she was not composed enough to maintain herhome. 189 When Bob asked his friend about removals, the friend's mainadvice was not to be home when it happened so as to avoid the shame thataccompanies hearing the knock on the door. 190 In addition to such dignitarylosses, tenants face the monetary expenses that come with having to find anew apartment, purchase new personal belongings, and/or take time offfrom work. The total cost of these various losses is normally quite high,but is hard to pinpoint.

More quantifiable are the landlords' financial costs. Although eachcase varies, a typical landlord loses roughly $3000 over the full course ofan eviction, almost one-third of which goes toward the removal phase. 191

Figure 3 breaks down the expenses of a typical eviction from start throughremoval:

182 id.183 See, e.g., Author's Personal Observations, supra notes 2, 107, 135.184 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116. No state law requires marshals to take these

inventories, but New Haven County forces marshals to do this.185 See, e.g., Author's Personal Observations, supra notes 2, 107, 135.186 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 116.187 Id; Interview with Peter Criscuolo, supra note 137...8 E-mail from Jane, Removed Tenant, to Michael D. Gottesman, Author (Aug. 18, 2006, 12:59

EST) (on file with author).189 Id.190 Interview with Bob, Removed Tenant, in New Haven, Conn. (May 16, 2006).19' See Figure 3.

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Figure 3

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94Daines, supra note 12 t4 b."ipsto ie"H fnsta naeaeeitofo

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Not all landlords hire attorneys, but the overwhelming majority ofthem-72% of landlords who eventually removed a tenant200--did in2005, and therefore faced a total loss of near $3000. This amount is high inabsolute terms, but becomes even more significant in light of the fact thatlandlords are often not much wealthier than their tenants.201

4. ViolenceAlthough each removal presents a different set of circumstances,

virtually all of them share one common characteristic: Removals occurwithout violence or resistance.20 2 Given that the stakes are high and thatany tenant making it to the removal stage has acted somewhat stubbornlyin the face of opportunities to resolve this dispute, it is remarkable that thisprocess almost never climaxes in outright conflict at the removal.

One possible explanation for this is that the state monopolizes power atthe removal.20 3 The landlord plays no role in the removal and is usually notat the apartment during the removal.2° Most landlords know not to getinvolved with the removal, and if they do not know, marshals stronglyadvise them to stay away.20 5 In Marshal Tommy Russo's experience,tenants get worked up much more often when the landlord appears at theremoval.20 6 Tenants often want to play out hostilities that were engenderedin the eviction process.20 7 Excluding landlords from the process reduces thechances of conflict.20 8

Sometimes the removal does take on a more hostile tone. Tenants inNew Haven have certainly taken drastic measures, such as handcuffingthemselves to the radiator,20 9 when the marshal tries to remove them.Elsewhere, tenants have acted violently: patrolling the front porch with

200 SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69. Executions list whether the landlord is

represented. Therefore, to arrive at this percentage, I noted which Executions that resulted in removalsin 2005 listed landlords' counsel, and divided that number by the total number of Executions.

201 Irving Welfeld, Poor Tenants, Poor Landlords, Poor Policy, in 2 PERSPECTIVES ON PROPERTY

LAW 374, 379-80 (Ellickson et al. eds., 1995); see Dennis Hevesi, For the Small Landlord, AllProblems are Big, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 1, 1998, § 11, at 1.

202 Determined by comparing the New Haven Police Department records for landlord-tenantdisputes to the DPW's log of removals to find overlapping dates and addresses. New Haven PoliceDepartment (NHPD), Call Information Maintenance Log, Landlord-Tenant Disputes (Jan. 1-Dec. 31,2005) [hereinafter Call Information Maintenance Log].

203 The marshal, rather than the landlord, removes a tenant from the property. See supra PartsIII.A.2 & III.C.1.

204 See, e.g., Author's Personal Observations, supra notes 2, 107, 135.205 Interview with Tommy Russo, supra note 103; see, e.g., STEWART ET AL., supra note 48, at

384 (guiding landlords not to get involved in the removal of the tenant and the tenant's possessions).206 Interview with Tommy Russo, supra note 103.207 Id.208 Id.209 Telephone Interview with David Schancupp, Attorney, Shiff & Schancupp (Aug. 24, 2006).

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guns in anticipation of the marshal's arrival,21° and even beating andburning to death the marshal when he arrived to carry out the removal.2 I'But incidents of resistance and violence are surprisingly rare. The NewHaven Police Department (NHPD) was called to assist with only tworemovals in 2005,212 which represents a miniscule portion of the 380 totalremovals that year.213 This suggests that the vast majority of tenants areremoved without significant resistance or violence requiring a policepresence. And some even see their removal as necessary. One tenant saidthat although he was depressed that he got removed, he "understood that ithad to happen" because he owed the landlord more than $4000.214

D. After a RemovalMost actors in the removal process feel the effects of a removal

beyond the actual removal day. Landlords have to spend money on repairsand they continue losing revenue until they rent their property. Tenantsneed to find somewhere to live. The DPW has to handle tenants'possessions.

1. Landlords - Continuing Financial LossesAfter removing a tenant, the landlord's financial losses continue in the

form of repairs and lost rent. Some tenants intentionally damageapartments by pulling out the baseboards and light fixtures, 215 or bypouring cement down the drain.216 When a tenant abuses the apartment, thelandlord has to spend a significant amount of money just to repair theproperty-in one case where a tenant allowed his dog to defecate all overthe apartment, repairs cost upwards of $2000.217 But according to alandlord who has been involved in a number of removals, this behavior isnot the norm and tenants rarely plot out how to damage the apartment.218

Filling an apartment with new tenants after a removal takes time.Before the removal, uncertainties of timing prevent the landlord frompromising an incoming tenant when the apartment will be available. Once

210 Dan Uhlinger, Barricaded Man 's Eviction Renewed, Foreclosed Owner Refuses to LeavePeacefully, HARTFORD COURANT, July 10, 2001, at B 1; Dan Uhlinger, A Brief Break from Barricades;Man Fails in Bid To Get Police Aid Against Eviction, HARTFORD COURANT, May 19, 2001, at B5; DanUhlinger, Facing Eviction, Man Vows He'll Die First; With Rifle, Barricades, Resident RejectsEviction Order, HARTFORD COURANT, May 17, 2001, at A3.

211 Sean Gardiner et al., A Violent History, NEWSDAY, Aug. 23, 2001, at A3; Sean Gardiner et al.,"Despicable Crime:" City Marshal Beaten, Torched in Brooklyn, NEWSDAY, Aug. 22, 2001, at A5.

212 Call Information Maintenance Log, supra note 202.213 SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69.214 Interview with Bob, supra note 190.215 Interview with Peter Criscuolo, supra note 137.216 Interview with Ardelle Cowie, Owner, Chelsea Co., in New Haven, Conn. (Dec. 14, 2006).217 Telephone interview with Anthony Lauria, supra note 198.218 Interview with Ardelle Cowie, supra note 216.

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the apartment does become available, how long it takes to fill it depends ona number of factors, especially location and size. A landlord who ownsproperties throughout New Haven says she can fill a one-bedroomapartment near downtown by the first of the following month, no matterthe time of year; a multiple-bedroom apartment near downtown normallysits empty until the start of a new academic term in the fall or winter; andan apartment outside of downtown can take two months to rent.2 19

A landlord may sue a tenant to recoup eviction expenses if the rentalcontract allows for recovery of expenses relating to enforcement of theagreement-e.g., attorney's fees, marshal's fee, mover's fee.220 Butbecause suing tenants costs money and tenants who have defaulted on rentpayments because they do not have enough money are often judgment-proof, landlords rarely do this. 22 1

2. Tenants - Link between Removal and Homelessness

Although a removal undoubtedly disrupts a tenant's life, it does so inperhaps a less dramatic way than the current literature would suggest.Some writers depict evictions, and especially removals, as leading directly222and immediately to life on the streets. As noted above, the media portraythe link between evictions and homelessness as robust.223 Homelessadvocates treat the link in the same way. A prominent writer and advocatefor the homeless asserts that "forced displacement frequently results inoutright homelessness. '224 A San Francisco homelessness advocacyorganization published a report titled "When the Rent Comes Due:Breaking the Link Between Evictions and Homelessness-An EvictionPrevention Action Plan. 225 Organizations' and municipalities'homelessness prevention plans often consider prevention of evictions as adirect solution for homelessness.226

2 19 d.

220 Baumgartner v. Rowe, No. CV074006655S, 2007 WL 2756924 (Conn. Super. Ct. Sept. 6,

2007); Leonard Indus. Properties v. Maisano, No. CV970412038S, 2001 WL 523563, at *5 (Conn.Super. Ct. Apr. 30, 2001); Plaza Realty v. Wiggs, No. CV H 8402-1292 HD, 1985 WL 263919, at *2(Conn. Super. Ct. Apr. 26, 1985).

221 Interview with Ori Spiegel, Attorney, Law Offices of Lawrence A. Levinson, in New Haven,Conn. (Dec. 14, 2006) (reporting under five percent of clients sue tenants after removal); TelephoneInterview with Robert Miller, supra note 97 (reporting that he hears about landlords suing tenants inunder five percent of cases).222 See supra note 14-16 and accompanying text.

223 See supra note 17 and accompanying text.224 Hartman & Robinson, supra note 10, at 468.225 HOMEBASE, WHEN THE RENT COMES DUE: BREAKING THE LINK BETWEEN EVICTION AND

HOMELESSNESS-AN EVICTION PREVENTION ACCESS PLAN (1989).226 See, e.g., MAYOR'S HOMELESS ADVISORY COMMISSION, THE NEW HAVEN TEN YEAR PLAN

To END CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS 22-24 (2005); NATIONAL ALLIANCE TO END HOMELESSNESS, APLAN, NOT A DREAM: How TO END HOMELESSNESS IN TEN YEARS 13 (2000) ("In the past

20081


Data suggest a more complicated picture of this link between removalsand homelessness. A high proportion of homeless individuals in NewHaven shelters were, indeed, once evicted. And eviction played a centralrole in making many of these individuals homeless: At Columbus House,New Haven's largest shelter, 20% to 25% of clients report evictions as aprimary cause of homelessness; 227 data from the two women's shelters thatNew Haven Home Restoration operates show 31% of clients indicateeviction as a primary cause of their homelessness; 228 at Life Haven, ashelter for pregnant women and women with children, a caseworkerestimates that up to half or two-thirds of the women coming to the shelterrecently have experienced an eviction.229 These data are self-reported, somay not be entirely accurate, but they suggest a link between evictions andthe homeless shelter population.

But tenants do not necessarily go immediately from an eviction to ahomeless shelter. John Thomas, a case worker at Immanuel BaptistEmergency Shelter, says that tenants often take a while to check into ashelter after an eviction. He describes a normal path from eviction toshelter: The tenant gets evicted, moves in with a family member, borrowstoo much money or overstays his welcome, gets kicked out, moves to afriend's couch, eventually gets kicked out for similar reasons, and so onuntil the evicted tenant has exhausted his support network and has nowhereto go but a shelter.23 °

Interviews with tenants roughly square with Thomas's explanation.Tenants scrambled to find housing, but were usually able to do so withoutfirst resorting to a homeless shelter. Before the day of removal, mosttenants had already arranged to stay with family or friends in town. Adinawas going to move in with her sister.231 Sheryl moved in with her son.232

Roxanne lived with her daughter.233 Jeff luckily had a friend with an extra

homelessness prevention focused primarily on stopping eviction or planning for discharge frominstitutions like jail or mental hospitals.").

227 Interview with Dick Caplan, Clinical Dir., Columbus House, in New Haven, Conn. (Apr. 10,2006). Note that all intake data is self-reported. Since shelters may not release client names forcomparison with lists of individuals evicted, this self-reported data is the best data available on thistopic.

228 E-mail from Kara Capone, Dir. of Programs, New Haven Home Recovery, to Michael D.Gottesman, Author (Oct. 10, 2006, 4:58 EST) (on file with author).

229 Interview with Diane Ecton, Caseworker, LifeHaven, in New Haven, Conn. (Apr. 10, 2006).230 Interview with John Thomas, Caseworker, Immanuel Baptist Emergency Shelter, in New

Haven, Conn. (May 22, 2006). For a similar storyline, see Melanie Lefkowitz, The Housing Squeeze,NEWSDAY, June 18, 2006, at A4 (" I think the sense out there is, you get evicted, you go directly to ahomeless shelter. But for most people, that's not how it works. You spend a couple of nights with afamily member, you spend a week with someone else,' said Judith Goldiner, a staff attorney with theLegal Aid Society.").231 Interview with Jorge, supra note 177.

232 Interview with Sheryl, supra note 151.233 Interview with Roxanne, supra note 150.

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UNDERSTANDING THE BIYTER END OF EVICTIONS

bedroom. 234 And Bob had a trickier task of convincing his ex-girifriend tolet him move in with her.235 It was the rare tenant who did not know wherehe would spend the night after their eviction.236

3. What Happens to Tenants' Possessions

When the DPW truck pulls away from a removal, tenants have notnecessarily lost their possessions for good. In practice, though, the majorityof tenants never see those possessions again.

a. Reclaiming Possessions

In the post-removal phase, the system once again imposes someunscripted delays on an otherwise speedy eviction process. These delaysmitigate the harshness of this process on removed tenants. The DPW truckdrives from a removal to the city's eviction warehouse, where it depositsall possessions from one property into one bin.237 New Haven notifiestenants that their possessions will remain in the warehouse for twenty-twocalendar days before going to auction.238 During this period, tenants mayclaim their possessions free of charge by calling Blee and arranging a timeto do so.239 The only rules are that tenants must provide their own movingtruck and labor to get the possessions onto the truck, and tenants must takeall of their possessions in the bin240

In practice, the DPW relaxes some rules at this stage for the benefit ofremoved tenants. Blee does not strictly enforce the rule about takingeverything, for instance. He discourages what he calls partial-pickups.24'Nonetheless 8% of tenants collecting their belongings in 2005 took onlysome of their possessions.242 In addition, the DPW gives tenantssignificantly longer than the minimum time period to reclaim their goods.Although the DPW tells tenants they have only twenty-two days, the DPWactually holds a tenant's possessions for an average of fifty-five days

234 Interview with Jeff, Removed Tenant, in New Haven, Conn. (Apr. 17, 2006).235 Interview with Bob, supra note 190; E-mail from Bob, Removed Tenant, to Michael D.

Gottesman, Author (Aug. 30, 2006, 1:32 EST) (on file with author).236 Of the tenants I met, only one did not know where she would be spending the night after her

removal. Interview with Maria, Removed Tenant, in New Haven, Conn. (May 16, 2006).237 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 133.238 Notice to Evictees, supra note 74.239 Most surrounding towns charge the tenant for storage fees. Hamden, for example, places the

possessions in commercial storage and to reclaim his possessions the tenant must pay the storage fee.See Telephone Interview with John Cabral Jr., supra note 76.

240 Interview with Frank Blee supra note 88.241 Id.242 To arrive at this number, I analyzed data available on forms tenants must complete upon

reclaiming their possessions. City of New Haven Dep't of Pub. Works, General Waiver and Release asto Possessions (throughout 2005) [hereinafter DPW, Possessions] (on file with author).

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before auctioning them.2 43 And tenants benefit from this delay: Althoughonly 29% of all removed tenants retrieved their possessions at all,2 " 54%of these tenants did so more than twenty-two calendar days after theirremovals. 245 On average, tenants claimed their possessions twenty-sevencalendar days after removal, 246 or five days after the statutorily-mandatedtime period.

This additional time is a product of how auctions are announced andscheduled. The DPW holds only one auction per month,247 and it must givethe tenants notice of this auction.248 Since many tenants do not havereliable addresses, the DPW publishes a notice in the New Haven Registeronce a month, to which Blee says a surprising number of tenantsrespond.249 Then the DPW holds an auction no less than twenty-twocalendar days after this announcement appears in the newspaper. 2 0 Thesedelays add together to grant tenants a significantly longer amount of timeto reclaim their possessions than statutes mandate.

b. Auctioning possessions

Items that are not claimed during this holding period must be auctionedto the public.25' In the middle of every month, on the second or thirdMonday, the DPW hosts an auction at its warehouse.252 The New HavenRegister announcement notifying tenants of the auction serves as the onlypublicity for this event. From one auction to the next the number of biddersvaries greatly for no apparent reason: One recent month saw around twentybidders253 and the following month only five.254 Potential bidders may notpreview the lots, 255 so quality of goods being auctioned can not affect

243 This finding is based on an analysis of a sample of 111 cases chosen throughout the year.Eviction Goods Inventories 2005, supra note 52; City of New Haven Dep't of Pub. Works, AuctionNotices (throughout 2005) (on file with author).

244 To arrive at this number, I analyzed data available on forms tenants must complete uponreclaiming their possessions. See DPW, Possessions, supra note 242.

245 Id.246 id.247 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.248 The City must use "reasonable efforts to locate and notify the defendant of such sale" and

"post[] notice of such sale for one week on the public signpost nearest to the place where the evictionwas made, if any, or at some exterior place near the office of the town clerk." CONN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(c) (2007).

249 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 133.250 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.251 CoNN. GEN. STAT. § 47a-42(c) (2007).252 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.253 Author's Personal Observation, Eviction Goods Auction, New Haven Dep't of Pub. Works

Eviction Goods Warehouse, 315 Peck St., New Haven, Conn. (Mar. 20, 2006).254 Author's Personal Observation, Eviction Goods Auction, New Haven Dep't of Pub. Works

Eviction Goods Warehouse, 315 Peck St., New Haven, Conn. (Apr. 17, 2006).255 Interview with Frank Blee, Eviction Warehouse Manager, New Haven Dep't of Pub. Works

(Mar. 21, 2006).

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turnout.At 10 a.m. sharp Blee starts the auction, leading the bidders-mostly

twenty-something minorities-in front of the first bin. Blee calls out thebin number and starts the bidding at ten dollars. Attendees squeezebetween stacks of boxes to get their first look at what is in the rear of thebin. Blee waits patiently while two or three people inspect the goods. Themajority of goods are in stacks of plain cardboard boxes that bidders arenot allowed to open for the sake of time, so there is an element ofguesswork involved. Bidders try to divine from the exposed items whetherthe bin is worth bidding on. Blee renews his call for an opening bid, thistime reminding the crowd that they could find anything in the boxes: atelevision, computer, microwave. Nobody bids. Blee mutters "Pass" andmoves on. Most bins get the same kind of reaction. Some sets of boxesgarner ten dollar bids. Then Blee gets to bin three, which holds a leathercouch and chair. This one sees heavy bidding before selling to Russ for$250,256 a sum on the high end of the auction price range. 217

Auction sales data confirm that this bid is unusual. According to theeight months in 2005 for which detailed auction data is available, onlytwenty-eight percent of all bins received any bids whatsoever. 258 And ofthose that did sell, the vast majority-eighty-three percent-went for theminimum bid of ten dollars.259 In 2005, the auction produced only $980 intotal revenue.260 According to the law, if a tenant's goods are sold atauction the tenant may file a claim for the difference between the price of

261the goods sold at auction and the cost to the City for moving and storage.Blee has not handled a single remittance request, however, in his sevenyears on the job.262

As it stands, the auction does not effectively redistribute goods to thosein need. In fact, it benefits few parties other than Russ. Everyone at thewarehouse knows him. 263 He has been to just about every auction in Blee'smemory in order to buy goods for the consignment shop he runs out of hishome.2 4 In 2005, he purchased forty percent of the lots sold at auction.265

According to anecdotal evidence, whenever a bin contains valuable goods,Russ outbids everyone-the other bidders at these auctions do not look as

256 Author's Personal Observation, supra note 253.257 See City of New Haven Department of Public Works, Bins To Be Auctioned (Jan., Feb., Mar.,

Apr., May, June, July, Sept., Oct., 2005) [hereinafter Bins to be Auctioned] (on file with author).258 Id.259 Id.260 Id.; DPW Performance Indicators, supra note 68.261 Notice to Evictees, supra note 74. The City takes $195 for moving and fifty dollars per month

for storage. Id.262 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.263 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 255.264 Id.265 See Bins to be Auctioned, supra note 257.

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CONNECTICUT PUBLIC 1NTERESTLA WJOURNAL

though they are affluent, and they are typically just trying to makepurchases for their own apartments for below market price. Indeed, datashow that Russ prevails in bidding on the more expensive lots: Eventhough he bought only forty percent of the lots in 2005, by dollar amounthe accounted for nearly half of all sales.267

V. DEMOGRAPHICS OF REMOVAL IN NEW HAVEN

With this understanding of the costs a removal inflicts on relevantparties, this Part delves into the question of who exactly are the landlordsand tenants at the center of this process. One might assume that the tenantsinvolved are poor and their landlords are rich. This study bears out theformer assumption, but challenges the latter.

A. Tenants

A number of municipal studies throughout the country have shown that"those who are evicted are typically poor, women and minorities." 268 Datain this subsection supports these conclusions, and reveals the additionalinsight that removed tenants often have no adult roommates and sufferfrom mental illness in relatively high proportions.

On a municipal level, evictions moderately correlate to medianhousehold income. 269 New Haven sees more removals per rental unit thando most surrounding, wealthier municipalities (with the exception ofWallingford, an aberration I cannot explain).270 Graphing removals perrenter-occupied unit against median annual household income shows aninverse correlation between median annual income and removals per unit:

266 Author's Personal Observation, supra note 253; Author's Personal Observation, supra note254. 267 See Bins to be Auctioned, supra note 257.

268 See Hartman & Robinson, supra note 10, at 467 (collecting data from seven local studies oneviction to demonstrate a clear trend that evictees are typically African American or Latino, poor, andfemale).

269 See infra Figure 4.270 Id.

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Figure 4 271

This scatterplot shows a moderate inverse correlation between incomeand removal rate - rA2 = -.68. Surely other factors come into play whenexplaining the incidence of removals in a given municipality, but this oneappears to have at least some explanatory power in New Haven County.

Within the City of New Haven, most evictions take place in the low-income neighborhoods.7 Appendix 2a shows New Haven census tracts bymedian household income. Most evictions cluster in the low-incomeneighborhoods.273 These findings corroborate previous findings,274 and inso doing they serve as a reminder that when we discuss what effectremovals have on tenants, this is a group of people who live on the edge ofeconomic security.

Furthermore, the low-income neighborhoods where removals occur inrelatively high concentration map fairly clearly onto the minorityneighborhoods in New Haven. Appendix 2b shows removals concentratedin Black neighborhoods, such as Dwight Street and Dixwell; and Appendix2c shows removals also concentrated in Hispanic neighborhoods, such asthe Hill and Fair Haven. Again, these findings corroborate previous

27' Total rental units and data on median household income were found in U.S. CENSUS BUREAU,FACT SHEETS (2000) for named municipalities, available at http://factfinder.census.gov. Removalstatistics were reported in telephone interviews. Telephone Interview with Henry McCully, Dir.,Wallingford Dep't of Pub. Works (May 23, 2006); Telephone Interview with John Cabral, Jr., supranote 76; Telephone Interview with Sharon, Clerk, East Haven Dep't of Pub. Works (May 23, 2006);Telephone Interview with Gerry Shaw, Clerk, Woodbridge Selectman's Office (May 23, 2006);Telephone Interview with Nancy McCarthy, Town Clerk, Town of Bethany (May 23, 2006).

272 See Appendix 2a.273 Id.274 See Hartman & Robinson, supra note 10, at 467-68 (collecting data from seven local studies

on eviction to demonstrate a clear trend that evictees are typically poor).

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findings,275 and in so doing serve as a reminder that removals, while basedon economic circumstances, disproportionately affect certain racialminorities.

New Haven data also corroborate that evictions disproportionatelyaffect women. Of the 496 removed individuals whose gender couldreasonably be discerned by their names, 54% were female and 46% weremale.276 New Haven data reveal yet another layer of interesting detail thatmay explain this gender disparity: The greatest gender disparity occurs atthe single-tenant level, where women comprise 57% of individualsremoved.277 According to observation27' and interviews,279 a number ofthese women are single mothers-children are not listed on Executions, soan adult living only with persons under eighteen appears as a single tenanton an Execution. The strain of providing for children presents a challenge,and single mothers likely fall short of their rent payments because theyhave less time to work and more expenses than others do.280 Such anexplanation of the gender disparity implies that removals often affectchildren.

One finding that other reports have not made is that most removedtenants live without an adult roommate. Two-thirds of Executions servedon tenants who were eventually removed listed only one individual'sname. 281 Tenants living alone likely face a higher rent burden than dotenants splitting rent payments. Perhaps these tenants do not try as hard asdo tenants living as a social unit-boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife,family-to avoid upheaval. Regardless of the explanation, this findingsuggests that removals disproportionately affect those without theimmediate social support structure of a rent-sharing roommate.

Scholars and policy-makers often allude to the link between mentalhealth and homelessness.282 But nobody has examined mental illness inremoved individuals. Examining mental health data for removed tenants inNew Haven reveals a fairly high incidence rate of mental illnesses amongst

275 Id. (collecting data from seven local studies on eviction to demonstrate a clear trend thatevictees are typically African American or Latino).

276 See SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69.277 id.278 Interview with Maria, supra note 236; Interview with Roxanne, supra note 150; Interview with

Sheryl, supra note 151.279 Interview with Robert Solomon, Professor, Jerome N. Frank Legal Servs. Org. at Yale Law

Sch., in New Haven, Conn. (Oct. 11, 2006).280 See Interview with Diane Ecton, supra note 229.281 See SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69.282 See, e.g., MICHAEL ALLEN, SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL: THE STRUGGLE OF TENANTS WITH

MENTAL ILLNESS To MAINTAIN HOUSING (1996); FEDERAL TASK FORCE ON HOMELESSNESS ANDSEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS, OUTCASTS ON MAIN STREET (1992); Paul Koegel et al., The Causes ofHomelessness, in HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA 24, 31 (Jim Baumohl ed., 1996); NATIONAL COALITIONFOR THE HOMELESS, MENTAL ILLNESS AND HOMELESSNESS: NCH FACT SHEET #5 (2008), available athttp://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts/MentalIllness.pdf.

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removed persons. Somewhere between nine to thirty-eight percent of allindividuals removed in 2005 have been diagnosed with a mental illness inthe Connecticut mental health system in the past decade. 283 Theseindividuals received the following diagnoses:

Figure 5 284

These data reveal only individuals with identified mental illnesses,though, and a number of mental illnesses invariably go undetected. Wemight look to other indicators of potential mental illness to get a morecomplete picture. One such indicator is whether a tenant has ever beenevaluated for competency to stand trial, since that designation indicatessomeone suspected of presence of mental illness. Data reveal thatsomewhere between 13% and 29% (with a midpoint of 21%) of allremoved tenants in 2005 had been arrested and evaluated for competenceto stand trial.285 These data do not show how often mental illnessesactually led to removals in 2005, but they do show that some significantportion of removed tenants likely suffer from a mental illnesses that could

impede efforts to avoid removal.

B. Landlords

Although the tenants involved in these removals largely fit the

283 CONNECTICUT DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION SERVICES DATABASE

(2006). To determine the prevalence of mental illness in removed individuals, I commissioned staff atthe Connecticut Mental Health Center to compare a database of all mental health patients diagnosed inConnecticut with my list of 521 individuals removed in 2005. Because I could provide only names asidentifying information for removed individuals, this exercise could not be precise. A number ofindividuals had common names, so it was unclear whether to count them as a hit or not. To resolve thisproblem, researchers created a range, with the low end of the range not counting any individuals whena name appeared more than once in the mental health database, and the high end of the range countingevery individual whose name appeared anywhere in the mental health database.

'" Id. Totals do not equal the stated range of 47 to 198 because some individuals have multiplediagnoses.

285 id.

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stereotype of being poor and somewhat vulnerable, the landlords involveddo not always fit the opposite stereotype of being rich. Landlords havebeen vilified by the American public.286 Such popular images rely, in part,on the assumption that the landlord is the "fat cat who takes unfairadvantage of the little mice who rent from him. 2 8 7 But no empirical workhas shown whether landlords involved in evictions are actually "fat cats."Data in this subsection actually suggest that although some landlords arerelative fat cats, many are not.

To determine how sophisticated and well-resourced any given landlordis, we might look to whether the landlord secures representation in hiseviction. As mentioned above, a lawyer's fee is in the ballpark of $1000

288for a typical eviction. So this is a cost that less wealthy landlords maylikely avoid. Although the existence or absence of legal representationdoes not provide a perfect indicator of wealth, it offers a roughunderstanding of a landlord's resources. Data show that most types oflandlords hire lawyers for every eviction, but that individual landlords doso only about a third of the time:

Figure 6 289

This finding challenges the common assumption that landlords are "fatcats," and portrays individual or "mon and pop" operations in a moresympathetic light.

To summarize, on the one hand, the aforementioned costs inflicted on

286 see, e.g., Welfeld, supra note 201, at 374 (recapping a Saturday Night Live skit in which atenant writes a bout killing his landlord); 2 LANGSTON HUGHES, Ballad ofthe Landlord, in THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF LANGSTON HUGHES 89, 89-90 (200 1).287 Welfeld, supra note 201, at 374; LANGSTON HUGHES, supra note 286, at 89-90. See also

Hevesi, supra note 201 ("Many people ... consider even the small owner 'a land baron-greedy,uncaring, with money to bum-when the reality is he's just another Joe Schmoe or an Abdul trying tomake a living.l').

28 See supra note 199 and accompanying text.289 See SUMMARY PROCESS EXECUTIONS, supra note 69.

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tenants are borne by a population that is largely poor and vulnerable in avariety of ways. On the other hand, the aforementioned costs inflicted onlandlords are not always, as one might expect, borne by affluent partieswho can afford to take a big financial hit.

V. LESSONS LEARNED

The above account of removals adds to our understanding of thecurrent value tradeoffs involved in an eviction process that moves towardthe final stage quickly. In addition, it yields insight into how a speedysystem might make these tradeoffs even more effectively. These lessonsapply most directly to New Haven, but might easily be extended.

A. What Works WellIn many respects, our fast eviction procedure works fine when a

landlord-tenant relationship breaks down entirely. At the scheduling phase,fairly strict service requirements effectively alert tenants of their removal.This scheduling phase moves fairly quickly for the landlord, even if thesystem imposes some delays (which mitigate the tenants' losses to someextent). 290 During removal, granting the state a monopoly of power andexcluding the landlord from the removal effectively limit the amount ofviolence at the end of this high-stakes process.2 9' The marshals' practice ofinventorying all possessions ensures transparency, which both limits theamount of litigation following removal day, and ensures that nobodyhandling the tenant's possessions steals from the tenant.29 The fact that themarshals and DPW coordinate their eviction schedules means that tenants'possessions do not at any point sit on the curb. 2 93 This eliminatesopportunities for tenants' belongings to be stolen. Perhaps moreimportantly, it does not humiliate the tenants by putting on display all theirpersonal possessions. Then once the goods leave the property, the systemicdelays between a removal and an auction gives tenants extra opportunity toretrieve their goods without significantly increasing the cost of storage.294

Taken as a whole, these practices make the removal process effective forthe landlord and somewhat more humane for the tenant than might beassumed. Indeed, actors on all sides of the process-a legal aid lawyerrepresenting tenants, 295 a landlord,296 and a marshal297 -reported general

290 See supra Part III.A.291 See supra Part I.C.4.292 See supra Part III.C.2.293 See supra Part III.A.3.294 See supra Part llI.D.3.a.295 Interview with Shelly White, supra note 77.296 Interview with Ardelle Cowie, supra note 216.297 Interview with Robert Miller, supra note 97.

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satisfaction with the system and no desire for major changes.

B. Where the System Could Improve

Although many parts of this process work well and some "customers"from all sides of the removal report satisfaction, parts could still beimproved. Removals create substantial losses for both the landlord and thetenant beyond the costs associated with the first phase of evictions.298

Reforms should aim to mitigate these costs to both sides and should beguided by three concerns common to legal reform: efficiency, process, andequity. The first generally benefits the landlord, while the latter twogenerally benefit the tenant. Balancing the tension between these ensuresthat the tradeoffs resulting from reforms will be fairly even-handed.

1. Efficiency Improvements

The legal system should aim to prevent removals altogether. But whentenants must be removed, as inevitably they will, the system should returnapartments to landlords quickly after the legal battle ends.

First, preventing a removal altogether would decrease administrativecosts by saving the landlord from paying the incremental cost ofapproximately $3000299 to remove a tenant, and saving the municipality thetime and expense of picking up the tenant's belongings.3 °° One way toprevent removals is to create disincentives to get removed. As currentlystructured, removals in both New Haven and New York City providemoving and storage services to tenants. Although providing moving andstorage services creates an incentive to remain until removal, differences inremoval rates between New Haven and New York City suggest this is notthe sole factor influencing a tenant's decision. In New York City, tenantswanting to retrieve their goods must pay landlords the cost of moving andstorage. 0 1 Whereas half of all New Haven tenants receiving an Executionremain in their property until removal, in New York four out of fivetenants receiving Executions move out.30 2 Given that New Haven's rentalunit vacancy rate is more than double New York City's-7.7%3 3 versus

298 See supra Parts III.C.3 & HI.D.299 See supra Figure 3.300 See supra Parts III.A.3 & III.C.1.30, See NEW YORK CITY HOUSING COURT, NEW YORK CITY CIVIL COURT HOUSING PART -

EVICTION, http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/eviction.shtml (last visited Feb. 20, 2009).302 Rebecca Webber, Issue of the Week: Evictions, GOTHAM GAZETTE, Nov. 12, 2001, available

at http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/affordhousing/docl .shtml.303 U.S. CENSUS BUR., 2006 AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY: SELECTED HOUSING

CHARACTERISTICS (NEW HAVEN CITY, CONNECTICUT (2006)), http://factfmder.census.gov (search"Fast Access to Information" for "New Haven City, Connecticut"; then select "HousingCharacteristics-Show More").

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3.7% 3°4-- ease of finding another apartment does not explain the differencein tenants' behavior. Although incentives linked to the storage policy don'tappear to be a controlling factor in removals, changes to storage policiesare likely to affect tenants' calculations. A new system could create a cost-sharing scheme: Most simply, the tenants and the DPW could each beresponsible for half of expenses; or perhaps the tenant's relative wealthmight be taken into account by indexing his share of costs to his monthlyrent burden. Such a scheme would decrease the tenant's incentives to get tothe end of a removal, because it would eliminate free moves. Therefore,this reform would likely achieve the efficiency goal of decreasing the totalnumber of removals. But this system also takes into account equityconcerns as it would still place fewer burdens on poor tenants than do mostjurisdictions.

Second, speeding up removals would decrease the amount of rentlandlords lose in a given eviction and would decrease the moral hazard oftenants living rent-free. Indeed, the immediate-past president of the NewHaven Landlord Association reports that most complaints he receivedabout the removal system during his tenure related to how slow marshalsand the DPW were to remove a tenant who had been served with anExecution. °5 One simple, albeit expensive, way to speed up all removalswould be for the DPW to buy a new truck and hire more employees.

If the City cannot speed up all removals but instead institutes a "fasttrack" program to speed up selected removals, it should not base priorityon payment of an expedition fee This would contravene equity concerns asthose landlords who have the slimmest margins and, therefore, need thefastest removals in order to keep up with their mortgage payments areprecisely the landlords who would least likely be able to pay to participatein this priority system (although, the details would matter here, because ifthe DPW can afford to set a fee smaller than the additional rent a landlordwould lose in a non-expedited removal, small landlords may find itcheaper, overall, to pay the expedition fee than not to pay that fee). Instead,the City might consider giving "fast track" privileges on the basis of howfew apartment units a landlord owns. Small landlords cannot preventevictions as well as can large landlords, because they often do not have theknow-how or the resources to screen tenants. 3°6 And, judging by the fact

304 U.S. CENSUS BUR., 2006 AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY: SELECTED HOUSINGCHARACTERISTICS (NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK (2006)), http://factfinder.census.gov (search "FastAccess to Information" for "New York City, New York"; then select "Housing Characteristics-ShowMore").

305 Telephone Interview with Ron Candelora, Immediate-Past President, New Haven LandlordAss'n (Dec. 18, 2006).

306 See Interview with Anthony Lauria, supra note 198; see Stephanie O'Neill, Tenants from Hell,L.A. TIMES, Aug. 8, 1993, at KI.

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307that the majority of "mom and pop" operations do not hire attorneys,they do not have the resources to absorb the financial losses of a removal.How to define small landlords could be debated, but one proposal wouldbe to say all landlords who own five units and fewer get schedulingpriority over landlords owning more than five properties. Critics mightargue that this would unfairly burden large landlords. But data suggest thatlarge landlords have a higher tolerance for delays at this point in theprocess. 308 Creating laws that treat small landlords differently from largeones would certainly create transaction costs, but it is possible and hasbeen done before, namely in the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.309Decreasing the losses on small landlords might encourage more individualsto enter the rental market as landlords, which might increase the totalhousing available.

2. Process Improvement

Although the proposed system might sound harsh on tenants with itshigher storage costs and its speedier removals, the system should still aimto limit dignitary harms310 to tenants. The best way to do this would be tohelp tenants relocate before the removal and save them the humiliation ofbeing kicked out of their home.

Community agencies could focus more resources on assisting tenantsin the removal phase. A number of agencies try to prevent evictions, or toresolve them before the removal phase, but none specifically assist tenantsonce they have received an Execution.3 11 Tenants might be more likely toseek or accept assistance at this point because it has become clear that theylost the legal battle for possession. An agency would be able to target itsclients fairly easily, by contacting the housing court each week andchecking where Executions have been served. The agency could then visitthe tenant's home and if the tenant does not appear to understand what ishappening-because they do not speak English, suffer from mental healthissues, or lack information on evictions-the agency could demystify theprocess. Then the agency could assist these tenants by helping them locateaffordable housing. Not only would this preserve the tenant's dignity, butalso it would benefit landlords and municipalities by saving them removalcosts. The Community Mediation Executive Director is optimistic aboutsuch an organization, saying it would both fill a gap in services and would

307 See Figure 6.311 See supra Part IV.B."9 42 U.S.C. § 3603(b) (2000) (exempting small landlords from statutes outlawing discriminatory

rental and sales practices).310 See Interview with Bob, supra note 190.311 Telephone Interview with Cristina Urrutia, Hous. Case Manager, Cmty. Mediation (Dec. 5,

2006).

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provide a benefit to a wide range of constituents.312 Surely not all tenants atthis stage are able to or want to move immediately to another property forwhich they must pay rent, but some portion of tenants would likely acceptthis assistance and would succeed at avoiding removal. 3

This proposal might be criticized as creating additional incentives fortenants to stay in their apartment until these informal forms of assistancekick in. But the current system already creates incentives to stay in anapartment until the bitter end of an eviction, so this proposal would likelynot alter a tenant's calculations about how to act; but it would reduce thecosts to all actors involved.

3. Equity ImprovementA process so closely associated with poverty as is the removal process

should evince some concern for the poor. Perhaps the most explicit waythe City could do this is in how it distributes unclaimed goods. As it stands,the auction benefits few parties other than Russ. It neither effectivelyredistributes goods to those in need, nor recoups much money for theDPW. Rather than auctioning goods, the DPW should unpack the boxes,separate out valuable items and give these items away. It could either dothis itself or it could donate the belongings to an organization withexperience in similar activities-perhaps the Salvation Army. Doing thiswould require the DPW to forego only a negligible amount of revenue.And it would allow the City to build the good-will that comes with gift-giving amongst those who are likely to be marginalized.

This program has a precedent. In the recent past, before sending thecontents of unsold bins to the landfill DPW employees would extractvaluable items-coffee tables, fans, chairs, bicycles. Then Blee woulddisplay these items in the eviction warehouse and give them to anyone who

314inquired. Between 2001 and 2005, Blee gave goods away to 1046individuals,315 primarily single mothers, former inmates reentering society,and the temporarily jobless. 316 And it was not rare for the recipients ofthese giveaways to be removed at some point -- Blee marked all items hegave away, and occasionally saw these markings when he collected itemsat a later removal.317 Through this initiative, then, the City was mitigatingthe cruelty of the removal process, albeit somewhat indirectly. The City

312 Interview with Charlie Pillsbury, Exec. Dir., Cmty. Mediation, in New Haven, Conn. (Dec. 12,2006).

313 For example, Roxanne was a tenant who wanted to move but could not find a new apartmentin the limited time she had to search after work hours. Interview with Roxanne, supra note 150.

314 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.

31' DPW Performance Indicators (Fiscal Year Performance Indicators, July 2000 through June2006) (on file with author).

316 Interview with Frank Blee, supra note 88.317 id.

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ceased this post-auction giveaway program, because it wanted to avoidliability for items it gave away,318 but it would do well to replace theauction with some reincarnation of it-perhaps by allowing students toestablish a volunteer agency to distribute these goods.319

VI. CONCLUSION

Eviction laws must balance significant interests against one another: onthe one hand, the landlord's property interest in his apartment and hisfinancial interest in reclaiming it in a speedy manner; on the other hand,the tenant's "personhood ' 320 and possessory interests in retaining his home.These interests sharpen at the end of an eviction action. Different systemshave attempted to balance these interests in various ways. The commonlaw, for example, placed its thumb on the side of the landlord, due to hissuperiority of estate. 321 During the revolution of landlord-tenant law in thiscountry in the mid-twentieth century, laws began to make a more sincereeffort to strike a balance between the two sides of the equation, and even tofavor the tenants' interests in some cases.322 Compared to other countries,though, summary process laws in the United States still appear to be quiteharsh on tenants. But laws do not tell the full story.323 To truly understandhow our current legal system treats parties involved in evictions, we mustexamine how the process unfolds in practice, whom it affects and how itaffects them.

By studying these questions empirically, this Note reveals that thevalue tradeoffs a fast eviction process in the United States are not quite aslopsided or dramatic as one might expect from simply looking at the lawson the books. On one side of the process, this Note has challenged theassumptions both that landlords bear few costs and that landlords canafford to bear the associated costs. This Notes' findings suggest that optingfor a slower process could seriously injure some landlords-this injury thatwould likely affect tenants in the form of fewer landlords wanting to rentto tenants, or more landlords charging higher rents for their properties.324

On the other side of the process, this Note has confirmed that the processdisproportionately affects poor, relatively vulnerable tenants. 325 But it has

318 Telephone Interview with Frank Blee, Eviction Warehouse Manager, New Haven Dep't ofPub. Works (Dec. 13, 2006).319 Interview with Robert Solomon, supra note 279.

320 Margaret Jane Radin, Property andPersonhood, 34 STAN. L. REv. 957, 993-96 (1982).321 Karl Manheim, Tenant Eviction Protection and the Takings Clause, 1989 WiS. L. REv. 925,

927-28 (1989).322 Id.323 See, e.g., ROBERT C. ELLICKSON, ORDER WITHOUT LAW: How NEIGHBORS SETTLE DISPUTES

(1991).324 See THE LAW REFORM COMMISSION, supra note 25.325See discussion infra Part IV.A.

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also revealed that norms and practices have been introduced-sometimesinadvertently, sometimes purposefully-into the system at its joints tomitigate the harshness of the legal rules.326

How to manage the total breakdown of a landlord-tenant relationship isa hard question. Politicians, academics and lawyers will continue to tinkerwith our system in order to arrive at the optimal tradeoff and allocation oflosses-in Connecticut, for example, which losses can be avoided andwhere inevitable losses should lie are regular topics of debate in the statelegislature.327 This study provides a starting point for such debates byelucidating how removals currently work, what losses they entail, and howthe system might improve.

326 See discussion infra Parts II.A, III.C. I, III.D.3.327 Raised S.B. 232, 2004 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Conn. 2004) (proposing to allow the landlord to take

immediate possession of and dispute of any belongings tenants leave behind); Raised S.B. 361, 2006Leg., Reg. Sess. (Conn. 2006) (proposing to allow the landlord to take immediate possession of anddispute of any belongings tenants leave behind); Academics, advocates and interest groups on bothsides of the issue weighed in on the proposals. Hearing on Raised S.B. 361 Before the S. Comm. on theJudiciary, 2006 Leg., Reg. Sess. (Conn. 2006), available at http://www.cga.gov/2006/JUDdata/chr/2006JUD00303-ROO1300-CHR.htm.

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CONNECTICUT PUBLIC 1NTEREST LA W JOURNAL

APPENDIX 1: METHODOLOGY

This paper relies heavily upon primary source and field research. Inorder to be as transparent as possible about the strengths and weaknesses ofthis research, this Appendix outlines the methodology used to collect keypieces of data.

Eviction DocumentsThe removal phase of evictions generates a number of legal

documents. Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Iaccessed all such documents produced in the City of New Haven in 2005:

Executions: I gleaned from Executions served on removed tenants thenames of parties (including landlords' attorneys), date of issuance, andaddress of the premises. Using this information, I gathered further dataabout the legal process that lead to eviction through the Online HousingCourt Database. This database details the names of parties, presence ofattorneys on both sides, and procedural history such as whether thelandlord won a default judgment. Furthermore, this database cataloguesprevious eviction actions against any given tenant.

Eviction Goods Inventories: I relied on the marshals' inventories oftenants belongings to learn the date of the removal, whether the tenant waspresent at the removal and a list of all items left behind by tenants.

Auction records: I used auction records to determine who attended theauction, which bins were sold, who bought those bins, and for how much.

Personal Observations:

To contextualize the data gleaned from legal documents, Iobserved key parts of the removal phase:

Removals: I observed thirteen residential removals. These werearranged on random dates-either I would call a marshal or Frank Blee,the manager of the DPW's eviction warehouse, to arrange this, or theywould call me when they scheduled removals-so there is no reason tobelieve that this sample was subject to selection bias. During everyremoval, I was granted full access and was able to observe what happenedinside and outside the premises: the marshal's interaction with the tenant,the state of the apartment before being packed, the movers' conduct inpacking the belongings, the tenants' reactions to the removal, and thetransfer of belongings to the DPW truck. Commercial removals are outsidethe scope of this paper, but for comparative purposes, I observed one suchremoval.

Property Pick-ups: Pick-ups are often scheduled just minutes inadvance, so I could not arrange to observe many of these. Nonetheless, I

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observed two tenants reclaim their belongings at various points when I wasat the eviction warehouse.

Auctions: I observed three monthly auctions, two in the spring and onein the fall. Blee confirms that these months were not particularly skewed inany way.

Interviews:

To supplement what I learned from the legal documents andpersonal observations, I interviewed a number of actors involved in allparts of the removal phase:

Tenants and Their Attorneys: I interviewed fifteen tenants, whom Ifound in a variety of ways. I approached some tenants at their removals,found others at shelters, sent interview requests to removed tenants at theirlast known addresses, posted advertisements in the New Haven Advocateand on Craigslist.org. Overall, this sample may present a selection bias, asmy methods likely excluded the most desperate tenants who end up livingon the streets after being evicted, those who are not able to be reached bypostal mail or advertisements and do not check in to a shelter. In additionto speaking directly to tenants, I also spoke to five legal services or legalaid attorneys who represent tenants in evictions.

Landlords and Their Attorneys: I interviewed four landlords, includingthe immediate past president of the New Haven Landlord Association.When landlords secure representation, they often deputize the attorney tohandle the entire eviction, so the attorneys often know more about theexperience of handling an eviction than do the landlords. With this inmind, I interviewed three landlords' attorneys. This total sample includesboth individual and corporate landlords owning from two to over 200apartments. I located these landlords primarily by cold calling names fromExecutions.

State Marshals: I interviewed five of the eleven state marshals based inthe City of New Haven. Collectively, these marshals have over a century ofexperience with removals. I was referred to these marshals by landlords'and tenants' lawyers, or by other marshals. Often these interviews tookplace while the marshal was supervising a removal.

Department of Public Works: I conducted a number of interviews withthe manager of the eviction warehouse and the City of New Haven DPWstaff who pick up tenants' belongings from evictions. In addition, I spokewith staff at departments of public works or their counterparts in eightother municipalities to gather comparative data.

Housing Court: I interviewed the New Haven Housing Court Clerk anumber of times, and also interviewed an assistant clerk, and a housingspecialist.

Community Agencies: I spoke to employees of a number of agencies

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that might play a role in tenants' experiences, including the ExecutiveDirector and caseworkers at Community Mediation (administrators of theRent Bank), the Executive director and caseworkers at the three largestshelters in the City of New Haven, and staff members at the HousingAuthority of New Haven, Connecticut Department of Children andFamilies, Connecticut Department of Social Services, and National StudentPartnerships.

Other Sources of Data

In addition, I relied on primary data from other sources that shedlight on the removal process:

Mental Health Client Listings: In order to understand the link betweenmental health and removals, I relied on client listings in the databases ofthe Connecticut Mental Health Center, the Connecticut Department ofMental Health and Addiction Services, and Criminal Justice Solutions. Forprivacy reasons, others accessed this data, compared it to a list of removedtenants I generated, and reported findings to me.

Shelter Intake Records: In order to understand the link betweenremovals and homelessness, I secured shelter intake data, including thename of the client and the date of check-in. Again, for privacy reasons,others accessed this data, compared it to my list of removed tenants, andreported findings to me.

New Haven Police Department Incident Logs: In order to understandhow often removals became violent or required police assistance, I secureda copy of the New Haven Police Department's incident log for landlord-tenant disputes in 2005.

Marshal Income Statements: In order to understand the state actorsresponsible for carrying out removals, I made a FOIA request to secure2005 income statements for all state marshals based in New Haven County.

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APPENDIX II:Illustrative Comparison of Eviction Laws in New Haven to Eviction

Laws to Other Jurisdictions

328 See, e.g., New York City Court Housing Part: Eviction, http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/eviction.shtml (last visited Oct. 12, 2008).

329 New York City Court Housing Part, http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/servicenoticeofpetition.shtml (last visited Oct. 12, 2008).

330 New York City Court Housing Part: Eviction, http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/housing/eviction.shtml (last visited Oct. 12, 2008).

331 See ARIz. REV. STAT. § 33-1368 (2007); see WASH. REV. CODE § 59.18.312 (2004).332 See, e.g., New York City Court Housing Part: Eviction, http://www.nycourts.gov/

courts/nyc/housing/eviction.shtmI (last visited Oct. 12, 2008); MINN. STAT. § 504B.365 (2002). For anexplanation of Minnesota removal laws, see LAWRENCE R. MCDONOUGH, RESIDENTIAL UNLAWFULDETAINER AND EVICTION DEFENSE (10th ed. 2008), http://povertylaw.homestead.com/ResidentialUnlawfulDetainer.html.

a3 N.C. GEN. STAT. § 42-25.9 (2001); WYO. STAT. § 1-21-1210 (2007).

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334 See, e.g., DEL. CODE tit. 25, § 5715 (1989); For an explanation of Delaware removal laws, seeSummary of the Delaware Residential Landlord Tenant Code (Legis. Print Shop),http://www.lscd.com/Home/PublicWeb/Content/Housing/summaryof the landlordtenant code.htm(last visited Oct. 12, 2008).

335 MASS. GEN. LAWS ch. 239, § 4 (2004).336 id.3" DEL. CODE. tit. 25, § 5715 (1989); OKLA. STAT. tit. 41, § 133 (1999); MINN. STAT. §

504B.365 (2002).

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2008] UNDERSTANDING THE BITTER END OF EVICTIONS 109

endix 2a: Removals and Low-income neighborhoods

CONNECTICUT PUBLIC INTEREST LA WJOURNAL [Vol. 8:1


Appendix 2c: Removals and Hisoanic Netahborhoods

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